#16 Dave (Jack) Hanson...Old Time Hockey At Its Best!
By: Michael Niziolek
for In Play! Magazine
“Slap Shot” was just a job during the offseason for Dave Hanson who played #16 Jack Hanson of the Hanson Brothers in the cult classic Slapshot, before that he was a hockey player and well traveled one at that. After his role in the sports comedy he continued his ten-year playing career racking up 300 points and nearly 3,000 penalty minutes.
Hanson jokes that even though the movie stared three good looking, intelligent guys he and his friends Steve and Jeff Carlson had no idea the film would become arguably the greatest sports movie ever made.
Now, thirty years later, Hanson is telling tales about his career, the film and its sequels in his book “Slap Shot Original: The Man, The Foil, The Legend.” In-Play! Magazine got a chance to catch up with Dave before his tour to talk to him about the book, movie and hockey.
IP: Let’s start out with the book “Slap Shot Original: The Man, The Foil, The Legend” - why did you decide to write it?
DH: I got a call a few years ago from a writer out in Minneapolis who was writing a book about the code of hockey. It had to do with fighting in the game, how players approach it and what they think about it. After we got done speaking, through the interview process with him, he was like geez you got some stories you ought to put in writing.
I laughed it off, but as time went on I started thinking about it and I thought it might be a fun thing to do. I had no idea how to approach it, but I figured I would just start at the seed and continue through till now. That’s kind of how I wrote and Triumph Books outside of Chicago liked the idea and decided to publish it for me. I had no idea where it was going to go, but I just tried to go chronologically through when I was born, through my childhood, my hockey playing career, the movie was part of that, and to now.
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