Goldie Goldthorpe
Canadian ice hockey player
Bill "Goldie" (also "Harpo") Goldthorpe (born June 20, 1953) is a Canadian retired professional ice hockey player. He is best known as the inspiration for Ogie Ogilthorpe in the 1977 film Slap Shot. Goldthorpe, a left winger, was a notorious hockey enforcer, a man once dubbed the "wildest, meanest, most unpredictable player in hockey." In his checkered eight-year career (1973–1980, 1983–1984), Goldthorpe played for ten minor league teams and four World Hockey Association squads; along the way, he racked up 1,132 penalty minutes in just 194 professional games.
Career
Born in Hornepayne, Ontario, Goldthorpe played his minor hockey in Thunder Bay, Ontario. His father was an engineer for the Canadian National Railway and his mother was a nurse's aide. At their wedding, Leo Boivin (now in the Hockey Hall of Fame) served as the best man.
Goldthorpe played junior hockey with the Port Arthur Marrs, Thunder Bay Vulcans and Thunder Bay Centennials from 1969 to 1973. Goldthorpe first met his junior coach, Albert Cava, at a midget tournament in Dauphin, Manitoba when Cava was wrestling with a referee who had slugged a spectator. In his last season with the Centennials, he led the league with 189 penalty minutes.
Goldthorpe was signed by the minor-league Syracuse Blazers in 1973.
The public source identifies “Goldie Goldthorpe” as canadian ice hockey player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Goldie, Goldthorpe and Canadian.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3110115. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1977, 1973 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Goldie Goldthorpe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.