Hanson brother Steve Carlson discusses cancer fight, 'Slap Shot' with NHL.com

In NHL.com's Q&A feature called "Sitting Down with …" we talk to key figures in the game, gaining insight into their lives on and off the ice. In this edition we feature Steve Carlson, center on the iconic Hanson Brothers line in the 1977 classic movie “Slap Shot.” Carlson is looking to brighter days ahead following his recovery from throat cancer and a horrific cycling accident, greater challenges than anything he faced while causing mayhem for the fictitious Charlestown Chiefs of the Federal League.
 
“I’ve been scraped up pretty good,” Steve Carlson is saying from his home in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. 
 
“The devil gave me cancer in 2021 (Stage IV metastatic squamous cell carcinoma) and he couldn’t get the job done. After radiation treatment had affected my blood, he pulled 17 of my broken teeth in one day to try to get me to shut my mouth. He took my weight down to 139 pounds, from the 170 when I began chemotherapy and radiation. Imagine the worst sunburn you’ve ever had in your life, then someone rubbing it with a steel-bristled brush. 
 
“Then there was the bike accident in Johnstown this past July -- three bones broken in my nose, leaving me still unable to breathe through one nasal passage, both eye sockets and a bone in my upper mouth broken, 11 stitches on the forehead, more in a hand. 
 
“I’ve had a lot of struggles but I’m healing up. It’s been a roller-coaster of highs and lows. I’ll say this: the devil can’t beat me. He’s got nothing left.”

Social media posts from Steve and Vicki Carlson, following his July 2023 bicycle accident that left him in hospital with serious injuries, and on Nov. 16, 2023, attending the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Hockey Fights Cancer game against the visiting New Jersey Devils.

Carlson found blessings in his cancer treatment and cycling accident.

Five days a week for eight weeks, he and his wife, Vicki, made the 90-minute drive from Johnstown to Pittsburgh for his radiation treatment, each weekday morning crossing the Fern Hollow Bridge just after 6 a.m. on the way to his 7:30 a.m. appointment.

His final session was July 25, 2022, a Friday morning. The following Monday, at almost precisely the time they’d have been on it, the bridge collapsed, injuring 10 and sending several to hospital.

Carlson’s electric bike accident came almost exactly a year later. Moments after he’d gone over the handlebars when a driver swerved in front of him without a signal, he was being tended to by an emergency-room nurse, a neighbor, whose son was playing in a baseball game a few yards away.

“Another angel,” he says. “She heard Vicki yell, ‘Steve, look out!’ and she knew exactly what to do.”

Following his recovery from that accident, the couple were driving near where he’d been gravely injured and a boulder the size of a basketball flew off a hillside, missing their windshield by inches.

Steve Carlson, aka Steve Hanson of Slap Shot’s legendary Hanson Brothers, in 2023 portraits: on ice and with his wife, Vicki.

“COVID, cancer, my teeth pulled and a bike accident… it’s been a tough two years. But I’m still here to talk to you,” Carlson says with a laugh.

NHL.com caught up with the 68-year-old glass-half-full native of Virginia, Minnesota, a 52-game, nine-goal checking center on the 1979-80 Los Angeles Kings and 173-game veteran of the WHA before that.

Fiercely proud to have been sober for a little more than three years and a strong advocate for mental health, Carlson was happy to talk about his recent challenges and, of course, “Slap Shot.” The popularity of the cult film continues to soar thanks to satellite and cable TV and streaming services, large portions of the dialogue recited word for word by any NHL player worth his salt.

Carlson has a few exciting projects in the works, which will be announced in due course. None include a reunion of the Hanson Brothers, business differences with his partners having fractured the foil-fisted franchise likely forever.

Steve Carlson light-heartedly loads up on foil in a big box store on March 15, 2020, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Carlson discusses his cancer fight, ‘Slap Shot,’ and rooming with Wayne Gretzky, among other topics, with NHL.com:

Hockey Fights Cancer, the NHL/NHLPA fundraising and awareness initiative, is 25 years old this season. You might never have imagined how close to your heart this program might become…

“Mike Bossy, Clark Gillies, Guy Lafleur, Jean Beliveau, Rod Gilbert, Tony Esposito… all these NHL legends who have lost their lives to cancer. You don’t realize how many have had the disease until you go into treatment. They’re everywhere. A good friend on Long Island had the same cancer I had, a month after me, and he died three months later. Holy smokes, how can that possibly happen?”

We’ve spoken about a new sense of purpose in your life, following your cancer treatment.

“Vicki and I manage our website, Instagram and social media. We have a group of people in treatment and I call them to talk and offer a few encouraging words. My neighbor had cancer by his temple, he’s 80-something. I walked him through what to expect and not expect. What I really want is to give caregivers their due, the medical professionals and the families of those who have cancer. These are the people who have to watch you and care for you. A patient can get their treatment -- it’s not easy -- then go to sleep. The caregivers can’t sleep. They have to watch you, feed you, bathe you, walk the dog, feed the cat, take the garbage out. They have to make sure I’m still breathing. I wouldn’t wish cancer on my worst enemy. It’s nasty. When I was getting my treatment, I’d sit there for three, four, five hours and I’d see people coming in with their port (for breathing or feeding tubes)… it was really hard.”

It's not been since February 2020, just before the pandemic, that the Hanson Brothers -- yourself, your brother, Jeff, and Dave Hanson -- have taken their act on the road. Are there more dates on your calendar?

“Things have happened between us that are unsettling, unfortunate. It’s sad. I can’t see us getting back together.”

The Hanson Brothers – from left, Steve, Dave and Jeff – pause after their Coke machine assault in a memorable scene from the 1977 movie classic “Slap Shot.”

The first shift of the Hanson Brothers is widely considered to be the most chaotic if not the greatest shift in hockey history. Where does it rank in the movie for you?

“Right at the top along with our first scene where I beat up the Coke machine in the bus station. That was shot in the Johnstown train station. We were supposed to just bang it a little bit but we kind of destroyed the machine and broke all the bottles inside it. And the national anthem scene where I yelled at the ref that I was ‘listening to the (darned) song.’ It took about three days to shoot the anthem scene. The ref (late, veteran actor Larry Block) couldn’t skate. When he turned toward me, he fell, time after time. Once he could stay on his skates, he couldn’t get to me. Then he couldn’t stop. I’m thinking, ‘C’mon dude, just get to me.’ It was easy for me to yell that I was listening to the song. But he couldn’t get to me. God rest Larry’s soul, he did his best.”

Announcer Jim Carr, played by the late Andrew Duncan, frantically called the Hansons’ wild first shift. If not Jim, who would you have wanted to do the play-by-play?

“Doc Emrick. No one else. Doc was one of my huge, huge supporters during my cancer treatment. He’d say a prayer and light a candle every morning. He’d call me, text me. When I was sitting at home, between periods, I’d text him about a great call he’d made. I can’t thank Doc enough for all that he did for me during my cancer treatment. He’s a wonderful human being. I had so much support during my treatment and recovery, calls and texts coming from friends and former teammates and opponents -- Gretz, Dave Keon, Bryan Trottier, Archie Henderson, Phil Bourque, Joe Micheletti, Gene Ubriaco and many others who are so special to me.”

Steve Carlson in a portrait with the 1975-76 WHA Minnesota Fighting Saints, and during a game with the 1979-80 Los Angeles Kings.

How much fun was it to skate past the opponents’ bench, swatting everyone with your stick?

“The first guy on the bench used to be a fan when I played for the Johnstown Jets. He’d always be yapping from the stands. My stick for that scene was rubber from halfway down the blade but the heel was solid. He was first in line and he wasn’t wearing a helmet. I’d hit him with the heel then everyone else on the bench got the rubber blade. We did the scene about five times before he finally put a helmet on, welts on his forehead. He never played the game but oh, he knew everything about it.”

It took a while for “Slap Shot” to truly become a classic. Why did it take time to warm up?

“Home video didn’t exist then. That’s OK. The movie got huge after it came out on DVD. It got two thumbs down from (critics) Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. David Letterman once asked them if they’d ever made a mistake with a rating and they said, ‘Yeah, ‘Slap Shot.’ ”

On the 1978-79 WHA Edmonton Oilers, you were 11th in team scoring with 40 points – 18 goals, 22 assists. More interesting is that you were only ninth in penalty minutes, with 50. Would Dave Semenko, with a team-leading 158, have been a good fit with the Charlestown Chiefs?

“No doubt. He was one of hockey’s best enforcers. Dave knew his job. He was a huge man (6-foot-2, 216 pounds). We did a show north of Edmonton in 2017 a week before he died. He played but he knew he was sick. A true gentleman, a class act.”

From left: Dave Hanson, Steve Carlson and Jeff Carlson as the Hanson Brothers during NHL Kraft Hockeyville USA festivities on Sept. 29, 2015 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, home of Slap Shot’s fictitious Charlestown Chiefs.

Wayne Gretzky had 104 points that season, the year you roomed with him on the road. How great could he have been had he played with you more than a single season?

“A few years later with the NHL Oilers (1981-82), Wayne had 212 points with 92 goals. (laughs) As a rookie, he couldn’t skate or shoot the puck very well. I taught him that stuff, though I get no credit for it. He was a great, great player even at 17. In Birmingham, I said to him, ‘Gretz, show me how good you are.’ He went around everyone and scored, came back to the bench and I said, ‘You’re good.’ And by that token, did you notice that Paul Newman never won an Academy Award until (1987) after he did ‘Slap Shot’? Universal Studios said, ‘Let’s get the Hanson Brothers in here and push Paul over the top to become a real star.’ (laughs) We brought him over for supper because no one really liked the guy. Nice salad and spaghetti with the family dressing and sauce, then he steals the recipes and launches his own brand, Newman’s Own…”

Newman, as playing coach Reg Dunlop, saying “No” almost in disbelief when you offer him foil for his fists might be minimalist acting at its best…

“Great actors have their lines but they also improvise. We had trouble doing ours. We were hockey players, not actors. (Director) George Roy Hill finally said to us, ‘You know what you’re supposed to say and do. Just improvise, ad lib and make us laugh.’ And that’s what we did. Newman saying to us in the dressing room, ‘OK guys, show us what you’ve got’ and we make the sign of the cross and race out of the room? That wasn’t in the script. They didn’t know how to get us out of there. We came up with it ourselves.”

“Slap Shot” has a great soundtrack. Is there a signature song for you in the movie?

(singing Maxine Nightingale’s hit) “ ‘It’s alright and it’s coming on, we gotta get right back to where we started from...’ When I hear that song, I know that “Slap Shot” is playing.”

Steve Carlson at home in March 2020 with some of his jigsaw puzzles, a favorite pastime during hockey’s coronavirus pandemic pause. A root beer bottle cap, the beverage he wanted no part of during Slap Shot, is directly over his head.

Forty-six years since “Slap Shot” was released, what do you make of its enduring popularity?

“One thing that we really took pride in when we did a show was seeing the smiles on people’s faces. We didn’t just sign autographs, we’d talk to the people. We’d joke with the kids, have fun with the adults. When we were under contract with a brewery, we did a show in London (Ontario) at Dougie Gilmour’s restaurant and a 5-year-old walked up to Dave and said, “I’ll teach you, you little (expletive).” We’d ask a father, ‘When’s the first time you showed the movie to your child?’ He’d say, ‘About 9, 10 years old,’ and I’d say, ‘Bad parenting!’ ”

Top photo: Steve Carlson in a 2023 portrait