The "Slap Shot" Story with Dave Hanson

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See website for details. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. Decades after it was released in 1977, the movie Slapshot holds up as one of the true classics of American sports film. Its comical depiction of a minor league hockey team resorting to violent play to gain popularity in a declining factory town still resonates with audiences around the world.

Much of the film's success has to do with Paul Newman's performance as an aging player coach. But the movie might never have achieved its iconic status without the bespeckled, brawling characters known as the Hansen Brothers, played by former Johnston Jets players Steve and Jeff Carlson and David Hansen. Dave Hansen grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he eventually starred in football, baseball, and hockey at Humboldt High School. He played for the University of Minnesota under legendary coach Herb Brooks, and of course that's hockey. Hansen then played for the Detroit Red Wings and Minnesota North Stars in the National Hockey League. The following excerpts are from a video interview with Dave Hansen by Paul Guggenheimer. It was recorded in Pittsburgh and is provided courtesy of Primal Interviews with Paul Guggenheimer.

Let's go to Dave Hansen. What I tell people is the movie is based on more fact and fiction. It was based on a team that I was playing for in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, called the Johnstown Jets in 1974-75.

And pretty much everything that goes on in the movie happened in one form or fashion. There was three brothers playing for us. There were big, tough, war-glasses named Jeff Jack and Steve Carlson. There was a fellow on the team that was called Dave Killer Hansen, i.e.

me. And then all the other characters on the team or on the other teams were either real characters of the game or a combination of characters of the game. So when Nancy Dowd, who was the sister of one of the players on the team, came down and started following us around and wrote the script, obviously they wrote in the three brothers and the killer and a few other people. And when they got around to making the film and casting for the film, they wanted to get actors like Nick Nolte, Peter Strauss, and a group of Hollywood actors to play these roles.

Of course, because you had Paul Newman, the number one actor at the time of Hollywood. Well, these guys could not skate. No matter how they tried, they gave them lessons and took them out in hockey practices and hired private instructors. And they just couldn't get them skated well enough to make it look like a professional game. So Nancy basically said, why don't we go back and let these guys be themselves and see if that would work out.

And basically that's what happened. They came back to Johnstown, they had been to Hollywood, George Ray Hill, the director, and Nancy and a few others, and sat the Carlson brothers down and sat myself down and we read a few lines in the script and they shook their heads and yet they still took a shot at us and pretty well casted us. And so it was going to be Jeff Jack and Steve Carlson were going to be the Hansen brothers.

Dave Killer Hansen was going to be Dave Killer Carlson, but Jack ended up going to Edmonton Oilers to play when we got around to filming, so they just plucked me out of the Carlson role and threw me in as a Hansen brother and we were off and running, or off and skating, I should say. Okay guys, show us what you got. When we got first stuck in front of the camera and were told to act and were given lines, we really were bad. We were robotic and it took a couple of times and you could see where George Ray Hill was getting frustrated. It finally got to the point where George said, let's stop for a minute, take a breath and pull this aside. He said, okay boys, this doesn't seem to be working too well. He said, so let's try a different angle.

What would you do in this situation? He'd set it up and we'd say, I don't know, we would just react. We would probably just screw something up. So let's give that a try. Next shot we did and we pulled it off and kind of ad libbed some stuff and threw in the regular stuff and he just says, that's great.

Don't change it. That's the way we'll roll from now on. So it really boiled down to, quite frankly, that the actors were the one acting, the hockey players were ourselves. We're just being ourselves.

The Hansons. We were 20, 21, 22 years old and had ordered the three of us. And when they first came to us and they said, hey, would you guys like to do a movie? We said, well, how long is it going to take?

Well, it's going to take two, three months through your summer. We were used to taking the summers off, going back to Minnesota, playing softball all summer long, drinking beer and getting ready for training camp in the fall. So it's like, okay, well, why not?

Let's give this a try. So we had no idea. For us it was just an opportunity to drink a lot of beer, have free food, get paid for doing something, and meet Paul Newman and hopefully meet some chicks and hopefully have some fun doing it. We had no clue, even to the point where, before the film came out, Universal Studios came back to us and offered us a seven-year, seven-movie contract deal. And we said, nah, we want to be hockey players.

We don't want to be actors. So there's an indication of how smart we were. I was having a pregame nap in my apartment and there's knocking going on in the door. And it wakes me up and there's knocking still going on. I go, what the, you know, so I open the door and I'm in my underwear in my dirty sweat socks and I just open the door and I go, what? And he looks up and he says, you Dave Hanson? I says, yeah. And he says, I'm Paul Newman. And I says, yeah, well, you are Paul. He says, yeah. He says, geez, did we wake you? And I says, well, yeah, kind of. And he says, well, you know, and then he apologized. And I said, you know, I'm going, oh, no problem. And he says, what's up? He says, well, I got some, you know, art director with me and a couple of movie guys, set guys, and they want to come in and take a look at a hockey player's apartment.

We want to see what it looks like. Do you mind if we come in? And I says, Paul, I got no problem. As long as you let me go back to bed, you know, and just stay out of my bedroom, you can do whatever you want. And he said, before I went, he says, yeah, no, we'll be quiet.

We just want to look around, take some pictures and some Polaroids. And then he says, but hey, Dave, he says, you got any beer in the fridge? I says, yeah, what's up? He says, well, the race is on. He says, you know, I'd like to maybe crack a beer and sit down and watch the race with these guys. He says, no, no problem. Drink as much as you want. TV's in there. Go for it.

So that was the first meeting of Paul, which was the start of a very good and long friendship. Everybody is just on their feet screaming, Gil, Gil, Gil, this is hockey. Really what we were hearing more than anything was the reviews in the hockey community. You would hear, you know, the GMs of the teams or, you know, the commissioner of the league would say, you know, that movie's a disgrace. You know, it doesn't portray hockey. And then, of course, you'd hear the players saying, that's absolutely right on. You know, it's the way it is.

You know, obviously a little satirical about it, but that's the way it is. And I'm telling you, Brown County is just visibly upset by this display. Come on down and get places for the home games. Bring the kids. We've got entertainment for the whole family. It was short-lived.

It didn't bother us. In fact, we ended up, we would have more fun than anything because now we would go into arenas to play a hockey game. And I'll use Dallas as an example. I went into Dallas where they hated me. And I always got booed, you know, in warm-ups and this and that.

So typically I'm skating around in warm-ups one time and I'm hearing the bone. And finally I look up and there's an entire section of fans up there with the glasses and the fake nose and holding the Charlestown Chiefs Booster Club. And it was just hilarious. So everybody started having a good time with it.

I'd face off against, you know, against an opponent that we'd fight all the time. And he'd look at me and I'd look at him and he'd say, buy a soda after the game. So it was good stuff.

Buy a soda after the game. The one that I think of mostly is Siskel and Ebert on David Letterman's show. And I think the question was something like David to Siskel and Ebert.

Is there ever a movie that you watched, critiqued, and then later on you kind of went back and realized you made a mistake on it? And they said, absolutely, Slapshot. He says, when we first saw Slapshot, you know, we gave it a thumbs down. Later on looked at it closely and realized, you know, what a great film that was. And now it's historically always in the top ten of the best sports movies of all time. And thanks to Greg Hengler, as always, for finding this and doing the work he always does for us on the producing and editing front. And by the way, again, if you have not seen Slapshot, watch it with the family. I mean, it is just great family entertainment. And you will laugh and then you'll just keep laughing.

You don't have to know hockey to love Slapshot. Dave Hanson's story, the story of one of America's great sports movies, here on Our American Stores. anywhere, you could redeem some serious prizes. Chumba casino dot com. Live the Chumba life.