By James Jahnke
Notre Dame forward Christian Hanson’s dad barely batted an eye when some emboldened 7-year-old greeted him with a movie quote full of curse words.
Current Hornet 91’ Coach Dave Hanson gets that $#*@ all the time while making promotional appearances stemming from the crude 1977 cult hit movie “Slap Shot.” Yes, the son of one of the fabled “Hanson Brothers” – the most famous forward line in cinema history – is now mucking it up in CCHA rinks.
“It’s pretty sweet,” said Christian Hanson, a freshman center with the Irish. “When I was 11, my dad took me out to this celebrity hockey game in L.A., and guys like Pavel Bure and Martin Brodeur were coming up to him and getting his autograph and taking pictures with him. I was just in awe of the fact that these were guys I had on my wall at home, and they knew my dad.”
Despite his connection to the movie, Christian Hanson says he didn’t see “Slap Shot” until he was 12, when a parent popped it in during a Pittsburgh Hornet bus ride. Offered the theory that most people probably don’t see it until that age – or later – because the film’s persistently vulgar language isn’t for really kids, Hanson disagreed. “Actually, I think I was the only one on the bus who hadn’t seen it before,” he laughed.
But he’s seen it plenty of times since then, and he counts himself among the flick’s legion of fans. He’ll gladly share with you how his father’s real-life exploits with the minor-league Johnstown Jets were woven into the script for the fictional Johnstown Chiefs and the goon brothers that made his family famous.
Dave Hanson, who played briefly with the Red Wings and North Stars after becoming a movie star, now runs Pittsburgh’s Island Sports Center, home of the Robert Morris Colonials. Christian said his dad and the other Hanson brothers (Jeff Carlson and Steve Carlson) still make about 30 or 40 promotional appearances a year, including a current tour of Europe. That’s down from the couple hundred of appearances they used to make when it was Hanson’s full-time job to play in charity golf outings and sign mementos.
Christian Hanson is a good sport about living in the shadow of his father’s fame. “I hope that it opens some doors for me and then I’m able to get a reputation and have some success myself,” he said.
Fighting Irish coach Jeff Jackson, for one, thinks the younger Hanson has plenty of promise as a player. Six games into Hanson’s college career, Jackson already likes his big power forward’s soft hands and understanding of the game. “He has a lot of tools,” Jackson said.
