The Johnstown team hadn’t had a lot of success in years past. Then these three showed up and started winning some games, and the Jets ended up winning the championship that year. The Carlson Brothers proved they belonged. They contrib- uted to the team in both points and penalty minutes and were renowned for stick- ing up for each other. Just like when they were kids, each brother played his role: Steve led the team in points, Jeff was a penalty-minute leader, and Jack had 27 goals and 250 penalty minutes in only 50 games. Jack eventually got called up to the Minnesota Fighting Saints and never returned to the minor leagues.
Although Jack Carlson never got screen time in Slap Shot, since he had been called up to play actual professional hockey at the time of filming, the wild, real-life on-ice anarchy with his brothers inspired screenwriters to craft some classic scenes. After Carlson got called up to play in the pro, a tough guy named Dave Hanson moved into Jack’s role alongside Jeff and Steve, and the characters were renamed and became the Hanson Brothers. The character of Dave “Killer” Carlson was based on Jack Carlson’s real-life on-ice persona.
Most of the mayhem and hilarity involving the trio in the movie is drawn from the real lives of the brothers. One example is the character of Ogie Ogilthorpe, the psychotic goon with a mushroom cloud Afro who features prominently in the last scenes. Ogilthorpe was not just a legendary villain created for cinematic drama, though. He was a real man and a real menace, one whom Jack Carlson dealt with directly.
“Before I went to the Fighting Saints, I played for the Minneapolis Junior Bruins. We were in a league with Thunder Bay,” Carlson explains. “We had all heard about Bill Goldthorpe, the man that inspired Ogie Ogilthorpe from Slap Shot. Goldthorpe couldn’t come to the games because he had just gotten out of prison or something and they wouldn’t let him into the country.”
But, just as the events in the movie unfolded, the Carlson Brothers eventually came face-to-face with the legend they kept hearing about.
“They finally came down to play us. But we had a tough team. Me and my broth- er Jeff and Jim Boo. We played them and Goldthorpe, and it wasn’t even close. They got their asses handed to them. You always heard about guys like Goldthorpe. He was a yapper. During the games you’d hear these guys like him yapping away, and I would look at them and say, ‘Really?’ I’d look at them as they were yapping and say, ‘Really? You’re talking? Really?’ The talkers like that never bothered me. It was the guys that didn’t talk that were the ones that scared me. The quiet ones would surprise you.”
Then there was the centerpiece scene of Slap Shot, when the Hanson Brothers start an all-out riot by going into the stands to fight some fans after one of them climbs the glass and throws a keychain, hitting one of the Hanson Brothers in the head.
That cinematic moment was, in fact, a major part of Jack Carlson’s actual family history on ice. The Carlson Brothers weren’t following any script or directorial in- structions, though. There were no Hollywood producers or motormouth agents in- volved. The Carlson Brothers were just being brothers.
“We were sticking up for each other,” Carlson says. “Well, in reality, we were in Utica, New York. We’re at a face-off, and a guy comes over the top of the glass and throws a rolled-up program at Jeff, and it hits Jeff right in the head,” Carlson says. “My brother Jeff was really, really tough. Jeff climbed the boards and jumped over the glass and goes after the guy. I looked over and saw my brother going up and over the boards and the glass, and, you know, it’s my brother, so I was right behind him, and I’m going over the glass, too. We got into the stands and got into some fistfights in the stands with some fans.”
“We got arrested. We were charged with fifth-degree assault. We went to jail after the game and were there for the whole weekend!”
There was no hilarity in jail, though, unlike in the movie, in which the Hanson Brothers call a massage parlor and order a pizza with their one phone call. Even in the rough-and-tumble world of professional hockey in the 1970s, beating people up in the stands was over the line.
Carlson’s really laughing now, really rolling, at the shenanigans that made him and his two brothers so popular in film and on the ice. “But we’re hockey players. So, we just think this will all pass over. . . . At the end of the season, we had to go back to Utica, New York, that summer and stand in front of a judge. The judge just reams us a new one. He’s saying all sorts of stuff—‘These people paid good money, and you’re beating them up! What are you guys doing?!’ The judge gives us a five-hundred-dollar fine and a year probation. Todd, that summer we had to meet with a parole office over in St. Paul, Minnesota, once a month!”
The legal fallout was far from over, however.
“It stayed on our records, too. Twenty years later, I’m doing some ice fishing in northern Minnesota. Then we head out of the boundary waters and into Canada. I call the Fort Francis Station and they say, ‘Uh, Mr. Carlson, have you ever been ar- rested?’ I say no. Then they say, ‘Um, yeah, you have. What’s this about Utica, New York? What happened in Utica? You have fifth-degree assault charges from there.’ This was twenty years later!”
The hilarity, the violence, and his reputation as one of hockey’s toughest fight- ers would eventually allow Jack Carlson entrance into the elite ranks of the NHL. After his rampaging stint with the Minnesota Fighting Saints and the New England Whalers in the World Hockey Association (WHA), Carlson joined the Minnesota North Stars and assumed his familiar role. He was added to the Minnesota roster solely because his hockey heart was as stout as any in the league. Carlson never backed down.
“People always ask me how many fights I won and lost,” Carlson says. “I don’t know. But I do know that I showed up for every one of them! Hahahaha who-ha!”
Before Carlson was traded to the North Stars, the team had suffered through a brazen act of arrogance and petulance by the Boston Bruins, and Carlson was brought in to transplant a healthy hockey heart back into the lineup.
During the 1970s and early ’80s, there was a history between the Minnesota North Stars and the Boston Bruins, a history that wasn’t kind to the Stars. The Bru- ins had garnered the reputation as one of the biggest and nastiest teams in the league, and they bullied the Stars unmercifully at every turn. Since their inception in 1967, Minnesota had cowered when playing in Boston and had never won a single game in Boston Garden. Not one.
Worse than the losing, though, was the Bruins’ sneering dismissal of the entire Minnesota franchise. In 1977 this took the form of Bruins enforcer John Wensink, whose actions during a game between the Stars and the Bruins would live in NHL infamy. Immediately after Wensink pummeled the North Stars’ Alex Pirus in a one- sided fight, he skated over to the Minnesota bench and challenged the entire team. Wensink, a hard man with a giant head of hair and a handlebar mustache, stood right in front of the whole Minnesota team and motioned the entire team to come out and fight—that he welcomed any other challengers. No one on the Minnesota bench moved. No one budged.
Glen Sonmor, the combative Minnesota North Stars coach, was standing be- hind the bench when it happened, and he felt his team’s spine go as limp as wet spaghetti. Wensink gave the team and its coaches and the entire franchise a disgusted hand wave, motioning them to just leave; just get out and let the adults play.
A short time later, Sonmor acquired Carlson in an attempt to inject strength back into his franchise and guarantee that their hockey heart would never be humil- iated again.
“Challenged the whole bench, and no one reacted. I wasn’t on the team then. I was in Hartford. They traded for me the next year. Glen loved the guys that were there to stand up for the team. He loved the skill guys, too. But he molded his team that way. To stand up. I think Sonmor was one of those guys that if you got challenged, you better react.”
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