Introduction by Jeff and Steve Carlson

In the fall of 1973, we left mom’s home cooking in Virginia, Minnesota, to go to the Twin Cities to pursue our dreams. Instead of getting stuck mining taconite on the Iron Range like many of the locals did once they got out of high school, we drove to St. Paul to attend one of the open tryouts the WHA Minnesota Fighting Saints were having. Little did we know that our desire to play together as a line would someday be the base for creating the most famous brother trio in hockey lore.

While Steve was still in high school, the Flin Flon Bombers of the Western Canadian Hockey League drafted him. He turned them down, though, and decided to stay with his two big brothers Jack and Jeff so that we could try our hands at making pro. We thought that by going to the Saints tryouts we would have the best chance of staying together and getting paid to play, even though our primary objective was just to keep playing. At our first tryout camp, a bystander who attended every session told us that we had about 50 shifts and scored 30 goals. Steve played center between Jeff at right wing and Jack at left wing. We wore our black-rimmed glasses, which raised a few eyebrows when we took the ice. After playing pretty well during the tryouts, the Saint’s general manager Glen Sonmor and coach Harry Neale said they were impressed, but we needed more experience.

We went to Waterloo, Iowa, to try out for the Blackhawks who were a semipro team in the United States Hockey League. We thought we had a real good tryout there also, but they only wanted to sign Steve, not all three of us. So, we decided to leave Waterloo and try our luck on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the Marquette Iron Rangers. We thought with a name like that and where we were from, the Iron Range, that we would have some good luck. We packed all of our stinky hockey gear and our dirty underwear and drove north. Jeff and Jack banged and fought while assisting Steve in putting the puck in the net. When it was over, Coach Oakie Brumm said, “Boys, welcome to the team.” We were thrilled to sign our first pro contract and have a place to play. We were paid $35 a game, and if we won we would get an extra $10 per goal and $5 per assist.

Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that what we were doing would morph into legendary status and be instrumental in creating one of the most popular sports movies of all time. We had some small-town fame in Virginia from our high school sports, but we never imagined that we would be the inspiration for some of the most quoted, recognized, and enjoyed characters in cinematic history. To think that it all started when our coach put a bounty on the head of one of the Green Bay Bobcats’ defensemen. Coach Brumm said he would give $50 to the first guy who dropped Ernie Dupont and Jack beat Jeff to the punch to collect the bounty. That’s where it started and it continued in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after we met our teammate, Dave “Killer” Hanson.

We remember Johnny Mitchell, the Johnstown Jets GM, driving us from Niagara Falls, Ontario, to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. We had no idea where we were going or what we were about to get ourselves into, but during the ride with Mitch, we listened like three little schoolboys and giggled every time he started a new sentence. He would say, “Son…” We even passed the time by betting on how many times he’d say “Son,” but we lost track by the time we got there. What a character he was.

Before Jack got called up to Minnesota during our first season with the Jets, we and Dave established ourselves as a wrecking crew in the NAHL and played a brand of hockey that Commissioner Jack Timmins had hoped to be rid of when he changed the name of the league from the Eastern Hockey League to the North American Hockey League. We not only caused havoc throughout the league, we showed the commissioner some things that we’re sure he thought could only be possible in a Hollywood movie. We all grew up in Minnesota and even though Dave was from the “Cities” (Twin Cities), we had a lot in common with him. We loved to play hockey, loved to fight, and loved to party. Well, Steve liked to play hockey and party, while the rest of us fought. Our living together, riding the bus together, hanging out together, and playing hockey together made us, at times, almost look and act like we could’ve all been related.

By the time the making of Slap Shot rolled around and Jack was unable to be our brother in the Hanson Brothers role (he had been called up to the WHA), Dave was the only logical and worthy choice to take his place. At first we were a bit concerned that he was too ugly and too much of a cement–head to be cast as our brother, but once he put the glasses on, he was perfect. Also, by this time we had spent two full hockey seasons together and shared more wacky things than most brothers could or should experience in a lifetime. He may not have been a brother in blood, but he certainly was a brother in arms, spirit, and insanity.

Shooting Slap Shot was fun, but oftentimes it was very boring while waiting for something to happen. To bide the time we drank, sang, pulled pranks, and made many new friends. Paul Newman, Strother Martin, and George Roy Hill were some of the exceptional ones, but most of the other actors and many of the behind-the-scenes crew became such good pals that it made the filming a wonderful experience. After the movie was wrapped up, we all went our separate ways in our hockey careers. We would occasionally cross paths out on the ice rink or during the summer, but we always stayed in touch. As for the movie, we really never knew the magnitude of its popularity and of the Hanson Brothers until we were all retired from playing. Jeff was working as an electrician in Muskegon, Dave was the general manager of a minor league hockey team in upstate New York, and Steve was the head coach of a team in the south when he pulled us all together for an impromptu appearance at one of his games. We sold out the hockey arena and got swamped by autograph seekers. Who knew?

Since then, the Hanson Brothers have appeared together to play in countless charity hockey games, sign autographs, take photos, shoot commercials, do interviews, make more movies—Slap Shot II and III—and shake the hands of millions of fans from around the world. At the same time we’ve proudly contributed to raising millions of dollars for charitable causes. Besides getting into the rare sibling squabble over who gets to sit in the front or who has to sit in the middle, one of the many benefits we’ve reaped over the years has been putting smiles on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people we’ve met. Plus, the greatest spinoff of all is that we’ve been able to grow in our brotherhood and love for each other…but don’t tell Dave.

We consider Dave a true brother, even though we tell everyone that he’s our cousin. We know that he would give the shirt off his back for us if either one of us needed it. We would do the same for him, but he can keep his underwear no matter how badly we might need a pair. To share so much of our lives with each other over the years because of the Hanson Brothers has been great. The day we retire from going on the road with our race car set to spread the Hanson Brothers’ joy will be a sad day in many ways. The least of which will be not being able to get together and share stories of the Carlson Brothers and Killer Hanson. But until that time comes, we will keep raising an elbow together in unison and giving our battle cry, “Gordie!”

— Jeff and Steve Carlson