Editor’s Note: This story is included in The Athletic’s Best of 2023. View the full list.
In the 1980s, club hockey games at Ohio University were must-attend events, especially against rival Denison, a liberal arts school from a little over an hour north. Before games, Ohio dimmed the lights and used a disco ball to make stars swirl around the ice. Then the home players would skate through a paper visage of their bobcat mascot, bursting onto the ice to AC/DC.
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Beer was cheap. Crowds were raucous. Fencing served as boards, so opposing players had to fear OU fans drenching them with drinks.
“It was like playing in front of a fraternity party,” remembers Bill Eaton, a Denison defenseman from 1980-84.
The intense atmosphere didn’t seem to faze one of Eaton’s classmates, a solid, traditional-style goaltender named Steve Carell. After one game during their freshman season, the OU campus radio station picked the Denison backstop as one of its three stars of the game. Carell had won a national championship at the squirt level and had become the Big Red’s primary goalie, outplaying upperclassmen to earn coach Seth Patton’s trust.
During his star-of-the-game interview, the OU broadcaster asked Carell how he ended up going to college in Granville, Ohio. The young hockey player fired off a self-deprecating response with the wit and timing that would one day make him famous.
“I didn’t get into Bowdoin,” he said.
The goalie and Patton laughed about his remark after the interview, but whether or not Denison was Carell’s first choice, attending the school turned out to be an ideal outcome. College years can be formative, and he thrived at the small college of only a couple thousand students.
“We both got to our senior year and were like, ‘Holy s—, I’m not ready to leave!’” says Elliot Mitchell, one of Carell’s Denison roommates.
Carell’s time at Denison helped send him on a path that made him a comedic face of his generation. He went on to star in hit comedies “Anchorman” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” and became a cultural pillar thanks to his portrayal of Michael Scott in “The Office.” In a bracket tournament of the best 21st century TV characters, created by The Ringer, readers voted the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company boss the winner. Carell’s ability to make Scott awkward, disconcerting and ultimately endearing won over viewers.
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When The Athletic began reporting a story on Carell’s days as a hockey player and college student, the actor declined interview requests through a publicist, who said he is taking a break from the public eye to spend time with family. But friends, teammates, classmates and faculty members shed light on his character and personality at the small university — and threw in a few memorable stories as well.
Back during their Denison days, Mitchell, who grew close to Carell through acting classes and improv, remembers the occasional smell of sweat-soaked leather pads wafting from the bag under his roommate’s bed. Though no one back then could have predicted how his career would unfold — Carell, for one, was planning to apply to law school — glimpses of his comedic gifts were apparent, even if some of his hockey teammates admit they didn’t pay close enough attention to see them.
“We didn’t know he was funny because we were idiots,” Eaton says.
Carell, who grew up in the hockey-crazed Boston area, was a solid player throughout his time in college, though he admitted in a 2022 Smartless podcast interview that he found high-blocker side saves tricky. He was one of only two freshmen in 1980-81 to make it through the season without injury, and Denison won its club league regular-season title. Patton, who would do agility drills with Carell on the handball courts, called the freshman “the backbone of the defense” in his end-of-season summary.
Sporting a beard and using a Koho goalie stick, Carell was even better as a sophom*ore, making 305 saves across 29 periods played. His .866 save percentage might not sound great by NHL standards, but for club hockey, it was respectable. Patton wrote that, with some work, Carell could contend for the league’s best goalie in the league the next year.
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But sophom*ore year turned out to be Carell’s peak with the Big Red. He appeared in games as both a junior and senior, but he missed chunks of the seasons for other commitments.
It turned out he had some promise in theater.
Midway through “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Carell walks into a body waxing studio, takes off his shirt and lies down on the table. A salon worker proceeds to yank strips of hair from Carell’s chest, and his screams growing more and more pained with each pull.
Watching in the theater, Eaton immediately turned to his wife.
“Oh my God,” he said, drawing looks from his fellow movie-goers. “That’s real!”
Those around Carell at Denison knew he was a hairy dude. Charlie Hartsock, who went on to be the best man at Carell’s wedding, called his friend’s ability to grow facial hair “automatic.” He was always growing it out for theater parts then shaving, Mitchell remembers. “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” makes Carell’s personality look far different than it actually is, classmate John McConkey says, but the waxing scene did not exaggerate his chest hair.
Around 25 years before the movie came out, Carell was in an Indiana hotel room with fellow freshman hockey players Lars Noble, McConkey and Eaton, who remembers this specific night because of all the laughter. He and Carell both had a fair amount of body hair, which became a source of humor for everyone in the room.
“Hey, what is that!?” Noble recalls chirping at his teammates. “You’ve got more hair on your back than on your chest!”
Those four were the only freshmen to travel with the Denison club team that year. They carpooled on road trips and had to cram into hotel rooms. They arranged a system, taking the mattress off both bed frames so each player could sleep alone on either a mattress or box spring.
“No one on the team had more fun than them,” Patton wrote in his spring 1981 end-of-season summary. “They usually traveled together in the ‘McConkeymobile’ and became very close by virtue of the normal hotel arrangements.”
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The McConkeymobile, also known as Bessie, was McConkey’s 1976 Buick Estate Wagon with wood-trimmed sides and a large cargo compartment in the back. He jokes that the car helped him make the team; Denison needed someone with a vehicle big enough to carry all the freshmen and their equipment. The school didn’t have its own rink, so Bessie ferried players to Ohio State for late-night practices and across the Midwest for games. Even when seasons ended, the smell of the gear lingered.
McConkey remembers Carell making frequent comments when taking his shift to drive the long, bulky car.
“You don’t really drive this car,” he’d say. “You just point it.”
Carell wasn’t as boisterous as one might expect. He was friendly, but it took time for him to open up. But defenseman Greg Heher remembers his commentary during postgame drives home.
Heher recalls him making remarks like: “Greg, you looked like a ballerina when that guy spun you around. Thank God I made the save!”
Across the sport of hockey, goalies have a reputation for being quirky, so Heher attributed Carell’s comments to him being a Boston goalie. But he also realized Carell had a quick wit.
“He was probably more amused with what he said than sometimes we were because he knew how funny it was,” former teammate Bill Thomas says. “Clearly his sense of humor was more advanced than the rest of us.”
Tony DiFilippo, a fellow goalie, joined Denison’s team in 1981-82, his and Carell’s sophom*ore year. Though the two were competing for playing time, DiFilippo found his teammate nothing but welcoming. He also recalls what was perhaps Carell’s most memorable game in a Denison uniform: an overtime thriller their sophom*ore year in the league tournament championship game. Denison was playing its talented nemesis Ohio University, which had beaten them twice in the regular season. Though the Big Red ultimately lost 5-4, Carell “kept us in it and almost stole the game,” DiFilippo says.
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“(T)o call one team ‘the winners’ and the other ‘losers’ would do a great injustice to the game,” Denison player and sports reporter Barry Pailet wrote afterward in The Denisonian, the school newspaper.
Carell, who is still listed in the Elite Prospects hockey database, got along with his teammates but ran in different social circles. They weren’t his closest friends away from the rink, but they didn’t have to be.
“He was a huge part of my life,” Noble says, “because hockey was a huge part of my life.”
Steve Carell makes a diving save for Denison University. (Photo by Vince Musi courtesy of The Post)
Carell’s teammates remember him as reserved, but that exterior melted the second he stepped on a stage. His first year on campus, he joined the Burpee’s Seedy Theatrical Company, a newly formed Denison improv group, and quickly left an impression.
Hartsock, who is a year older than Carell and was one of the founding members of Burpee’s Seedy, remembers most people needing to get their bearings on stage before diving into an act. Not Carell. During one show, Mitchell remembers, the Burpee’s Seedy performers asking audience members to yell out professions as improv prompts. Carell heard “carpenter” as “car punter,” and without hesitation pretended to tee up a vehicle and kick it.
The Denison hockey players knew their goalie was involved with theater, but not all of them saw him in action.
“We weren’t the kind of guys who would go to something cultured,” Eaton says.
Other teammates found time to watch Carell on stage. McConkey remembers noting how different his improv and goaltending demeanors were. It was fun to watch, and Thomas believes it taught him a lesson about his fellow students.
“You sort of see all these people that you didn’t know or you thought you knew and wrote off — ‘Oh, they’re not cool,’” Thomas says. “Then you saw them in this group and it just changes your perception of who someone is and makes you feel like a jerk that you didn’t go out of your way to get to know them.”
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On top of his improv work, Carell performed in campus plays. He was the lead in “The Country Wife,” and also appeared in “Candide,” which limited his junior year hockey availability, “A Flea in Her Ear” and “Romeo and Juliet.” (His knowledge of the latter did not translate to Michael Scott, who once said, “Holly and I are like Romeo and Juliet, and this office is like the dragon that kept them apart.”)
During Carell’s freshman year, he was cast in “The Servant of Two Masters,” an 18th century Italian comedy. Before spring break, Kevin Hoggard, then the Denison theater chair, told students they had to make it back from vacation in time for the first rehearsal or they’d be cut from the show. Carell didn’t show so he was out.
“It felt a little bit like making a burnt offering of my own son on a pyre of wood,” he says, “but I dropped him.”
Years later, Hoggard had dinner with Carell and two other former Burpee’s Seedy members in Los Angeles. When Carell sat down, he immediately looked at his old professor.
“You kicked me out of ‘Servant!’” he said with a laugh.
Steve Carell with members of the Burpee’s Seedy ensemble at a 2019 reunion at Denison University. (Courtesy Bridget Welch)
In 2019, Carell found himself where he’d been decades earlier: on Denison’s campus, backstage with his old classmates before a Burpee’s Seedy improv show. He was back for the group’s 40th anniversary reunion.
Wearing black shirts and jeans, the group huddled together, holding hands as they prepared for an evening alumni improv show at Swasey Chapel. Some of their heads, including Carell’s, sported gray hair, but they exuded youthful excitement.
“It felt like a look back into time,” says Bridget Welch, at the time a sophom*ore Burpee’s Seedy member.
They proceeded to walk on stage, introduced by current members of the improv group, and perform in various improv scenes, which were stopped and started by a hand-held horn. The seats were packed, and it wasn’t a leap to say that Carell was a big reason why. Hollywood megastars don’t show up on Denison’s campus every day.
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At the reunion, Carell commended the current Burpee’s Seedy members on keeping the group going — it’s the longest-running college improv troupe in the country. “At the 50th reunion, which one of you is going to wheel me out in a wheelchair?” Welch remembers him asking.
Burpee’s Seedy activities weren’t all he did on his campus visit. He also met with university president Adam Weinberg, who presented him with a red customized Denison hockey jersey. The president has hockey connections himself. Three of his nephews — Quinn, Jack and Luke Hughes — play in the NHL.
The two posed for a photo with Carell holding the jersey, proudly displaying Denison’s “D” logo.
“He’s a super loyal alum,” said Weinberg, who said Carell has helped raise money for the hockey team and various projects on campus. “One of the things I really admire about Steve is he’s just always responsive. Engaged, happy to help the college when he can.”
Though Carell is not in touch with all his Denison hockey teammates, they have followed his career closely. DiFilippo recently showed off an old team photo at a wedding, and Noble’s kids adore “The Office.” He got a kick out of Carell skating for scenes in the show and thought his old teammate looked good on the ice.
Those who remain close with Carell, like Hartsock and Mitchell, say his personality hasn’t changed since Denison.
“I wouldn’t have known it then,” Eaton says, “but looking back, I would say he knew who he was.”
And he hasn’t forgotten his college roots. At the Burpee’s reunion, after the alumni performance ended, a student approached the stage and asked Carell for a picture. The actor obliged, and a line started to form. He stayed for the next hour, smiling and holding phones to take selfies. Everyone wanted a piece of their school’s most famous alumnus, the former goalie once cut from a school play, and Carell was happy to accommodate them all.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic. Photos: Kevin Winter / Getty Images; the Adytum yearbook; courtesy Vince Musi of The Post)
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