

It did bother me at the beginning, but it's my livelihood."

"She said, 'Why don't you mention that stuff? Why don't you tell people that stuff, that it bothered you?' I said, 'Oh well, that's not the way I am. "I would never talk about 'Slap Shot,' I would never want to mention 'Slap Shot' because I was a hockey player, not an actor. "I said to her, 'You know, I was really after we made 'Slap Shot' that I would be going, playing, making it to the NHL, making it to the, playing pretty well and everyone recognized me as an actor.' "We just talked about this, me and my wife," Steve Carlson said of Vicki, his wife of five years. Somehow Carlson has navigated what at times has been a frustrating, demanding road - not all that different from the long minor-league bus rides romanticized in the iconic 1977 hockey movie - through four decades, slipping regularly between his real-life persona and that of the goofy, violent, yet lovable Steve Hanson, one of the three brother characters who are central to the film.
