49 Fun Facts About Slap Shot

What do the Hanson brothers wrap around their knuckles before every game in Slap Shot?

Aluminum foil. The players who portrayed the trio say that touch came from the script: in real games they wore golf gloves dried rock-hard on a radiator.

What do the Hanson brothers play with in their hotel room while their Slap Shot teammates drink and play cards?

Toy race cars. Dunlop is appalled that his new signings have brought their toys along, until he finally puts them on the ice and the childlike trio brawl their way into the crowd's affections.

Which director reunited with Paul Newman on Slap Shot after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting?

George Roy Hill. He insisted on actors who could really skate, and held on-ice tryouts in Los Angeles and New York to find them.

Who wrote the screenplay for Slap Shot?

Nancy Dowd. She went on the road with a minor-league team, and tape recorders ran on its bus so that her dialogue would match the way the players really talked.

Whose real minor-league experiences was the Slap Shot script largely based on?

The screenwriter's brother. He phoned her with tales of being beaten up and losing teeth on the road, so she flew east to watch his team for herself.

What kind of eyewear do the Hanson brothers wear on the ice in Slap Shot?

Thick black-rimmed glasses. The taped-up frames became the trio's trademark, and thirty years after the film the three actors were still putting them on for dozens of fan appearances a year.

Which real hockey brothers were Slap Shot's Hansons based on?

The Carlsons. Jeff, Steve and Jack skated on one line for the Johnstown Jets, and two of them ended up in the film because no trained actor could skate well enough to play them.

Why did the third real-life brother never play a Hanson in Slap Shot?

A WHA team called him up. He was needed for its playoff run just as shooting began, so a Johnstown teammate, Dave Hanson, took his place in the trio.

Which future Twin Peaks sheriff plays Ned Braden, the Chiefs' top scorer who refuses to fight?

Michael Ontkean. He had been a college hockey star, and the director wanted actors who could really skate: Nick Nolte tried out too but could barely stay upright on the ice.

Which publicity stunt does tight-fisted manager Joe McGrath make the Chiefs take part in early in Slap Shot?

A fashion show. The players hate modelling so much that captain Johnny Upton vows to give the audience a shock on the catwalk, and the screams from the hall suggest he keeps his word.

Which actor, the prison captain in Cool Hand Luke, plays the Chiefs' penny-pinching manager Joe McGrath?

Strother Martin. It is his McGrath who admits, early on, that this season will be the club's last, the news that sets Dunlop scheming to save it.

What is the name of the Chiefs' play-by-play announcer, played by Andrew Duncan?

Jim Carr. His obvious toupee is a running joke: an exasperated Ned Braden storms into the broadcast booth and asks him why he wears 'that rug'.

What is closing in Slap Shot's Charlestown, costing 10,000 jobs?

Steel mill. Its workers are the hockey club's paying crowd, so once the closure is announced the team is told that this season will be its last as well.

Where does Dunlop claim the Chiefs might be sold to, in order to motivate his players?

Florida. He feeds the tale to sportswriter Dickie Dunn, and once the paper prints that a St. Petersburg group is bidding, his players believe they are skating for jobs in the sun.

What is the nickname of Tim McCracken, Syracuse's player-coach in Slap Shot?

Dr. Hook. Paul D'Amato's wild-eyed turn as McCracken is said to have given comics artist John Byrne the look of his Wolverine.

Why does owner Anita McCambridge decide to shut the Chiefs down even after the crowds come back?

A tax write-off pays more. She compliments Dunlop on drumming up a buyer, then explains that the club is worth more to her closed than sold, which leaves his whole scheme pointless.

What does Ned Braden do on the ice that ends the brawl in the championship game?

A striptease. As the band strikes up 'The Stripper' he peels down to skates and a jockstrap, the fighting stops to watch, and he ends up carrying the trophy round the rink dressed the same way.

What does Syracuse's player-coach do in the final that hands the Chiefs the title by forfeit?

Punches the referee. Tim McCracken skates over to protest, the official waves him away, and the punch he throws in reply costs Syracuse the championship.

What does McGrath tell the losing Chiefs during the final to get them brawling again?

NHL scouts are in the stands. McGrath screams it between periods, and every Chief except Ned Braden drops the clean hockey they had sworn to play and goes back to brawling.

What does Dunlop call the clean, fight-free style he asks the Chiefs to play in the Slap Shot final?

Old-time hockey. The Chiefs try it for exactly one period, and are battered by Syracuse and booed by their own fans for their trouble.

Who plays Ogie Ogilthorpe, the feared Syracuse goon Slap Shot talks about but shows only at the end?

Ned Dowd. A Johnstown Jets forward, he doubled as the film's technical adviser, then stayed in the business and rose to executive producer of films such as Apocalypto.

Which country, the Chiefs' announcer reports, refused to take back the deported Ogie Ogilthorpe?

Canada. The joke had a real model: Goldie Goldthorpe, the Syracuse rookie enforcer behind the character, whose brawling on the ice and off it landed him in jail cells.

Which Long Island Ducks player-coach, later behind the Toronto Maple Leafs' bench, is said to have partly inspired Reggie Dunlop?

John Brophy. A noted brawler in his Eastern league days, he gets a wink from the film, which gives his surname to Hyannisport's drunken centre.

What do the Hansons do during warm-ups against the Peterborough Patriots in Slap Shot?

Jump the other team. It happened for real in a Johnstown playoff series: after the pre-game brawl the visitors from Buffalo would not come back out, and lost the game and the series by forfeit.

What hits Jeff Hanson in the face in Slap Shot, sending the brothers into the stands and then to jail?

A set of keys. The real incident, in Utica, began with a thrown cup of ice, and the one teammate who escaped arrest passed the hat for the squad's meal money to bail the others out.

By their coach's account, what did Binghamton's players wear in warm-ups to mock the real-life Hansons?

Plastic glasses and big noses. Coach Dick Roberge recalled his players vowing to pair off the moment the puck dropped, and a fight that ran about 30 minutes until everyone was too tired to go on.

What is Steve Hanson trying to listen to when he snaps at a lecturing referee in Slap Shot?

The national anthem. The referee is warning the brothers that he runs a clean game when Steve, the goon, cuts him off in outrage at the bad manners.

What made Slap Shot's Quebec dub unusual for a Hollywood film?

It used local street slang. Its adapter recalls a test audience howling at the dub made in France and its European hockey terms, so the film was redone in joual, the everyday French of Quebec.

In which fictional league do the Charlestown Chiefs play in Slap Shot?

The Federal League. The name is made up, but men who played and broadcast in the real North American Hockey League behind it say the film barely exaggerated its nightly brawls.

Which star was in line to play Reggie Dunlop until the director asked whether he could skate?

Al Pacino. He took the question as a sign that the director cared more about his skating than his acting, and the part went to Paul Newman instead.

In Slap Shot, Dunlop claims a statue in Charlestown's park honours which animal for saving the town from a flood?

A dog. The real statue, Morley's Dog, rescued nobody: the cast-iron lawn ornament was itself swept away by Johnstown's great flood of 1889 and later recovered.

The Chiefs' rivals from Hyannisport, the Kennedys' Cape Cod home, skate under which fitting nickname?

The Presidents. Their centre takes the ice so drunk that he warns Dunlop what will happen if anyone checks him into the boards.

Which soft drink does a newly arrived Hanson brother refuse in Slap Shot, demanding grape or orange instead?

Root beer. In Quebec his disgusted verdict on the drink turned into a catchphrase that generations of filmgoers have quoted back at each other.

Which men's magazine put Slap Shot at the top of its 1998 list of the 100 best guy movies?

Maxim. Its reasoning was that the Chiefs live the life every real guy dreams of, successfully put off adulthood, and are rewarded for their immaturity with a parade down Main Street.

Slap Shot's screenwriter went on to share an Oscar for the story of which Jane Fonda film?

Coming Home. She had written it for Fonda under another title, saw it handed to a second writer, and told a reporter the new version was terrible, well before the film won her the award.

Which Baldwin brother leads the Chiefs in Slap Shot 2?

Stephen Baldwin. In the first of two direct-to-video sequels, the once-feared Chiefs are reduced to losing scripted games every night to a hockey version of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Whose hit single 'Right Back Where We Started From' serves as Slap Shot's theme song?

Maxine Nightingale. Even Pauline Kael, who thought the film was ramming entertainment down her throat, conceded that the record punches up the pacing whenever it plays.

What is the name of the Chiefs' Quebecois goaltender who explains penalties to the camera as Slap Shot opens?

Denis Lemieux. In his fractured English, a foul means you go to the box, two minutes by yourself, and 'you feel shame', and then you get free.

Which composer of The Magnificent Seven's famous theme oversaw the music for Slap Shot?

Elmer Bernstein. He is credited as music supervisor, not composer: the film runs on radio hits of the day, among them Fleetwood Mac's 'Rhiannon' and an Elton John ballad.

Which actress, later Oscar-nominated for Places in the Heart, plays Lily Braden, Ned's unhappy wife?

Lindsay Crouse. Her Lily loathes life as a hockey wife in a dying town, and Dunlop coaxes her to walk out on Ned in the hope that misery will finally make him fight.

Which future NHL coach, then a young Johnstown Jets forward, appears as a Hyannisport player in Slap Shot?

Bruce Boudreau. By his own account the director asked who had the worst apartment on the team, everybody pointed at him, and his rundown flat became Reggie Dunlop's home on screen.

The player who portrays Steve Hanson later roomed in Edmonton with which teenage rookie?

Wayne Gretzky. The man filmgoers knew as a brawling goon was a working professional for 14 years, and followed that season in Edmonton with one in the NHL for the Los Angeles Kings.

In which state is Johnstown, the city where most of Slap Shot was filmed?

Pennsylvania. The shoot ran through the spring of 1976, which is why a film set in the depths of the hockey season shows green trees and not a flake of snow.

Where does Dunlop say he is headed as player-coach at the end of Slap Shot?

Minnesota. He tells his estranged wife that he will be coaching the Minnesota Nighthawks and that she knows where to find him, and she drives off without a word.

Which league do the Hanson brothers tell Dunlop they have come from in Slap Shot?

The Iron League. The name echoes the real brothers behind the trio, who came from iron-mining country in the upper Midwest and first skated together for a team called the Iron Rangers.

What do the bored Chiefs gather round a bar-room television to watch in Slap Shot?

A soap opera. The script grew out of time spent with a real team, and it is as much about the tedium of minor-league life, killed in bars, diners and motel rooms, as about the brawling.

What became of the real Johnstown Jets in 1977, Slap Shot's release year?

They folded. Life copied the film: their league collapsed that year and the Johnstown flood of 1977 wrecked the arena's ice-making plant, leaving the city with no team the next winter.

Paul Newman told Time magazine that since Slap Shot his language was 'right out of' where?

The locker room. 'There's a hangover from characters sometimes,' he explained, adding that some things stick.

A 1970s playoff brawl between Johnstown and the Buffalo Norsemen was the Jets' payback for what?

A fan's racist sign. A Buffalo spectator had held up a placard saying that Black men should be playing basketball, aimed at Johnstown's one Black player, and his teammates took their revenge at the next game.