Pennsylvania figured prominently in the league that inspired 'Slap Shot' and debuted 50 years ago

The Hanson Brothers of ‘Slap Shot’ fame each played in the old North American Hockey League; from left, Dave Hanson, Steve Carlson and Jeff Carlson roughing up my son, Jack, at a charitable event in Palmyra, Pa.

On the night of March 4, 1975, a knife-wielding doll on The ABC Movie of the Week, “Trilogy of Terror,” left my sisters shaken at home.

My brother, father and I (at 8, the youngest of five siblings) missed the movie. We were at the Central Maine Youth Center in Lewiston for the first professional hockey game I had ever seen.

The game was relatively calm, the visiting Johnstown, Pa., Jets topping my hometown Maine Nordiques, 5-4. But on any given night in the original North American Hockey League, terror could play out in the form of swinging sticks and flying fists across a trilogy of 20-minute periods.

Even if you’ve never heard of the NAHL, you’re probably familiar with the movie that immortalized it: “Slap Shot,” which starred Paul Newman and ranks among the great sports movies of all time.

The NAHL, emerging from the old Eastern Hockey League, premiered 50 years ago, with three games on Oct. 12, 1973. At the Cambria County War Memorial Arena, Syracuse defeated the host Jets, 7-3.

Pennsylvania would figure prominently in the NAHL’s all-too-brief history, from opening face-off to the final buzzer four seasons hence.

The Philadelphia Firebirds joined the league in its second season; the Erie Blades in its third. Johnstown and Philadelphia won the league’s championship, the Lockhart Cup, in years two and three, respectively.

Lockhart Cup champs

The Johnstown Jets won the NAHL’s Lockhart Cup in 1975, the Philadelphia Firebirds in 1976.

Hanson Brothers

But it was the Jets’ 1974-75 season that inspired “Slap Shot.”

My first game included a couple of fights and a fashion show featuring a bikini-clad model (a photo caption wondering whether “the distraction” contributed to the Nordiques’ loss).

I remember none of that. What lingers in my memory is seeing the Jets’ Steve Carlson, wearing black-rimmed glasses, here, there and everywhere.

Yet, Carlson appears nowhere in the game box score. Two Jets players whose names do appear are Dave Hanson, who had a fight, and Ned Dowd, who served a bench penalty.

Dowd carried a tape recorder throughout that season, according to Hanson in his book, “Slap Shot Original.”

Dowd “recorded our conversations on the bus, in the locker room, in the bars, restaurants, parties — almost anywhere and anytime we were together. … After we bugged him enough about what he was doing, he told us that he had a sister living in Los Angeles who was a screenwriter and that she was interested in writing a movie about us,” according to Hanson.

Nancy Dowd received an Oscar nomination for her screenplay, which cast Johnstown as “Charlestown” and many Jets and other NAHL players in acting roles.

In fact, three Jets — Hanson, Carlson and the latter’s brother Jeff Carlson — may have upstaged Newman, who portrayed player-coach Reg Dunlop, as The Hanson Brothers, goons who wore Coke bottle glasses, traveled with toy racing cars, and wrapped their knuckles in aluminum foil for fights.

When I launched my short-lived online hockey magazine, Pennsylvania Puck, in 2011, Hanson was kind enough to write a guest column. Then as now, Hanson was executive director of Robert Morris University Island Sports Center near Pittsburgh.

“ ‘Slap Shot’ is more than just a sports film from the 1970s,” Hanson wrote. “It is an ageless piece of history that has entertained millions of fans generation after generation and will continue to do so long after my brothers and I hang up our skates, take to playing shuffleboard, and use aluminum foil just for wrapping our leftovers.”

For decades, the Hanson Brothers continued their act, performing at hockey arenas and raising money for charity.

“Slap Shot” endures because it’s entertaining and an accurate portrayal of what hockey was like in the 1970s. And as the decades roll on, it becomes more of a time capsule, a window into an era of hockey that no longer exists.

Folding in Philly

Back then, we didn’t think much about the long-term effect of fighting and repetitive head trauma, which has been linked to a degenerative brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

The NAHL’s style of play wasn’t without its detractors even when it was in business. Willie Marshall, a legendary player for the Hershey Bears and still the American Hockey League’s all-time leading scorer more than 50 years since he last played (he died this year), was general manager of the NAHL’s Buffalo Norsemen in 1975-76.

Buffalo forfeited a playoff series to Johnstown after a pre-game brawl.

“I’ve played hockey for 20 years and I’ve seen a lot of brawls,” Marshall said in a wire story. “I’ve been in the minor leagues, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Hockey is secondary in this league … I hate to say I’m a member of this league.”

The Norsemen didn’t return for the 1976-77 season, which ended where all of this started for me, at the Central Maine Youth Center. My brother and I were on hand on April 10, 1977 when the Blazers completed a four-game sweep of the Nordiques and won the Lockhart Cup.

No one knew it at the time, but it was the final game in NAHL history.

Variations on this headline from the Carlisle, Pa., Sentinel appeared above a wire store in newspapers across the United States in April 1977, just three months after ‘Slap Shot’ premiered.

The spring and summer of 1977 brought turmoil as the Blazers’ owners unsuccessfully attempted to sell the financially struggling team before shutting it down.

The Jets’ owners put that team up for sale, blaming a drop in attendance on a brutal winter and the team not being as good as in previous years. A UPI story in April suggested that players were distracted by their involvement in ‘Slap Shot’ and the accompanying “glamorous movie sets and actors’ guild salaries.”

July brought massive flooding to Johnstown, leaving “eight inches of muck” on the War Memorial ice surface, according to one newspaper account, and quashing any hopes of the Jets playing that fall.

The NAHL was down to five teams, but even at that Maine, Binghamton, Philadelphia and Erie reportedly would have had to help bankroll the Utica, N.Y., club.

The NAHL folded on Sept. 24, 1977, at a league meeting in Philadelphia.