SI.com - NHL - Where Are They Now?: The Hanson Brothers - Tuesday June 26, 2007 2:22PM

Wow, what a trip down memory lane.  I can’t believe it has been 30 years since Slapshot came out. Like any hockey player who grew up after it was filmed, it was an integral part of my life.  Seriously, is there any hockey player older than say 12 or 13 who hasn’t seen it?  Let me just share a few of my favorite memories of the movie in my life:

1. Before pretty much every single home game of my high school career a bunch of us would all go over to one teammates house and watch the movie.  We knew every damn line.  Sometimes, during games, we would recite them.  Of course, being a hormone enraged teenager, you can guess our favorite scenes, and they weren’t always hockey.  “What was that guys name?  Damned if he wouldn’t get in the penalty box and uh-uh-uh…”  Joe Mcgrath, the owner of the Chiefs, was phenomenal.  His lines are classic and seem to come out of nowhere and the next thing you know you are rolling on the floor.  And that’s after watching it 30 times.
2. In college, it was a regular event to watch Slapshot as well.  I won’t say we watched it before games, but we probably watched 3-4 times a semester.
3. I still watch it every few years and now I am going to have to buy the DVD, I suppose
4. In 1992, on my way to college, we stopped and stayed in a Howard Johnson’s in Utica, NY on the way out to Amherst College.  As we walk into the lobby, I couldn’t help but feel like I have been here before.  But when?  Nope, I had never been there.  It was the same lobby where the Chiefs stayed on one road trip where one of the Hansons is shoving the hotel clerk into a planter and hitting him with a tree (or something like that.  Dang, now I need to go watch it again so I can remember it exactly)
5. Played a few games in the Syracuse War Memorial, which was used in a few scenes as well.
6. At Amherst, I can remember a class with a particularly pompous pre Law professor (I won’t name names, but if you were there you  know who I am talking about.  And by the way he HATED sports, so the irony is great, in my mind anyway) and he was asking, in his usual way, a question about a person where there wasn’t really a right answer.  After shooting down several people who didn’t quite get the nature of his question and responded with real names, I threw out from the back of the room the classic Slapshot line from Ned Braden: “Is the answer Jesus?”  And you know what, I was right.  Little did the Prof. know I was being a smart ass and throwing some Slapshot at him.  If he had known that, he probably would have failed me on the spot.
7. I can still recall a interview Letterman or one of those guys did with Roger Ebert.  And he asked him if there was any movie that he changed his mind on, thinking it was bad and then seeing it again, changed his mind.  The first answer that came to mind: Slapshot
8. I would bet I have watched it 100+ times

Anyway, thanks for going down memory lane for me.  Can’t say I played like the Hansons’, but, damn, were they funny and right on with much of the mentality of hockey.  Even if the fighting is outlandish at times, the characters are dead-on.  So, if you’re looking for a classic movie, regardless of the hockey, rent Slapshot.

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