This movie manages to undo everything that was set up in the first movie. Gordon's NHL career is over, he's back to being a nobody and Charlie's mother married another man.
What's funny is nowadays seems to be Disney's strategy with sequels it actually goes much further back.
I always hate changes like these. You can tell a sequel wasn't thought of or planned. Sometimes they can do a good job at keeping the two stories smoothly transitioned and sometimes they can. Karate Kid does this too. Though they do a GREAT job with transitioning over to the sequels, I never liked how Daniel's girlfriends were always written off to make room for the new girl.
shareRe Gordon's hockey career, I think it would have worked better if it just turned out he didn't do all that great at the minor league tryouts and went back to being a lawyer before being approached by Hans/Jan re the goodwill games - it would mean the film isn't starting on such a downer, and also make Gordon (and the audience) feel better about not pursuing a hockey career sooner.
As for Charlie's mother, I couldn't help feeling like that must have happened fast if this film only takes place a few months after the first one! Especially given how cautious she was about getting involved and not wanting to disrupt Charlie's life etc In fact it's implied that Charlie didn't get on with her new husband, so this is a complete 180 from her character in the first film.
They could have just had it so that the long distance thing fizzled out and she then stayed single. Actually if the Gordon story had been different at the beginning, it would have fixed some of this story too because they wouldn't need to contrive the skate shop and charlie always being there
Better still, they could have just not made the sequel and left us with the happy ending of the first one! But I guess it was a case of, if they're gonna make one, make it quickly before the kids get too old and too big, and maybe that's why this feels rushed and the story so disjointed at times - ties in with the very interesting thread about there potentially being so many deleted scenes/storylines