Hi everyone! Welcome back to another week of Golden Seals Hockey!  Just a little over a month before the official launch of The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams, and I can hardly wait.  I’m expecting to receive my first copies sometime in the next week or two so I’m looking forward to that.  I’ll be bringing a few dozen copies of my book to Seals/Barons Night in Toronto on October 23rd, so if you’re in town, stop by St. Mike’s College at 6:30pm for an evening of reminiscing with Seals players and fans.  Wayne King and Marv Edwards have just confirmed they would be coming, so more good news, folks.

Also be on the lookout for reviews of my book as I start my sort-of publicity tour.  Well, not so much a publicity tour, but rather me sitting at the kitchen table sending e-mails to my publisher asking them to send copies to people who have agreed to read my book.  If all goes well, you may see reviews in a few major newspapers and magazines (Hockey News, I’m looking at you… Call me!) Oh, that, and hopefully a few podcast interviews along the way too, which should be interesting since I have never been interviewed before, so it should be interesting… or a complete disaster that will be a permanent part of the fabric of the Internet for generations to come.  Keep your fingers crossed!

As far as new website material goes, I’ve re-upped my subscription with Newspapers.com so I’ll be looking for new articles that escaped my clutches during the research period of my book.  I’ve already found a couple of great articles, so you guys are in luck!  New to the site this week is an article about how the Seals had improved over the course of the 1975-76 season.  Lots of information about that season’s team awards too, which is indeed a tough area of Seals history to document due to the lack of publicity such things got during the team’s nine NHL seasons.

Finally, the other new addition to the site this week is a card that will frighten you to your very soul.  I’m serious!  Last week’s Emerson Etem crotch shot has nothing on this bad boy.  In fact, this card features the baddest boy of all, the Dark One himself!  I feel I may have gone too far with this one, and I debated long and hard whether or not I wanted to go in such a dark direction.  I almost want you to just click on some other site right now and get away from here just to save you from what lurks in the Overexposed wing this week, but you’re all adults and you have free will and stuff, so all I can say is you’ve been warned!  You have SOOOO been warned!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone!

This week, I’m pleased to announce the winners in the first two groups of the Seals/Barons Uniform Playoff.  In group A, the one representing the WHL years, the winner was the Seals’ 1966-67 jersey, the one modeled here by Gerry Odrowski.

In group B, the one representing the California/Oakland Seals of 1967-1970, the winner was a bit of a surprise to me: the 1969-70 away jersey, modeled here by Mike Laughton.

I honestly thought one of the 1967-69 jerseys would take Group B. I absolutely love the original NHL Seals’ jersey, but that’s democracy for you!

You can go to the survey section to check out the next two groups of jerseys, and vote for your favourite in each group.  Group C has jerseys from the Charlie Finley era, while Group D covers the Seals’ final two seasons when they made the switch to Pacific Blue and California Gold.

In honour of the remake of the Stephen King classic “IT”, the other new addition to the site is a disturbing hockey card hockey card from 2013-14, the only 21st-century card we’ve ever featured.  Judging by how much it made my stomach turn, it may be the last.  If you dare, venture on over to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!

In other Seals news, the October 23 event taking place at St. Mike’s College in Toronto is shaping up to be quite a night.  Wayne King and author Waxy Gregoire have both confirmed they are coming, which is great news!  Walt McKechnie, Marv Edwards, and Dick Mattiussi have been extended invitations, but have not yet confirmed they will be attending.  Unfortunately, Rick Hampton and Ron Stackhouse have confirmed they are unable to attend.  So far, however, it is shaping up to be a great evening.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone.  Welcome back for another week of California Golden Seals action and other oddball additions. A few weeks ago subscriber Warren Shapiro requested an article on Seals defenseman Bert Marshall, and so this week, I’ve added that to the articles section.  It wasn’t easy finding an article about Mr. Marshall, however, as he was not the most headline-grabbing of players scoring only 8 goals in 313 career games with the Seals.  He wasn’t a big scorer for the Seals, and by his own admission, he was not much of a fighter either.  This short piece is a funny story, told by Marshall himself, about how he confronted former San Francisco Seal Orland Kurtenbach, who was a very good fighter, one night when the Red Wings and Rangers faced each other.  You can read it here.

The other new addition to the site is a strange card from the 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee set featuring the Vancouver Canucks’ Bobby Schmautz.  When I first saw it, I could bear-ly believe it.  You’ll have to check it out for yourselves to see what I mean.

Finally, there’s some big news for any Seals and Barons fans in the Toronto area.  On October 23, Seals fan (and Golden Seals Hockey subscriber) Gene Willis is organizing a Seals/Barons Night at St. Mike’s College in Ontario’s capital city.  It’s shaping up to be a great evening.  So far, he has been able to get Bob Baun, Joey Johnston, Dennis Maruk, Terry Clancy, Howie Menard, Wayne Carleton, and Morris Mott to attend.  I will be there as well with (hopefully) a few advanced copies of my book, so if you want to pick one up a week before it hits the market, you’re (hopefully) in luck.  Gene is also hoping to have Mark Greczmiel come on down as well to show his recently-completed documentary on the Seals, but nothing confirmed yet.  As I get more details, I will post them to the site.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

 

Hi everyone! It’s great to be back after a wonderful two-week vacation.  I feel rejuvenated and looking forward to taking on new challenges.  I even got motivated enough to start work on a new book.  Originally, I was hoping my next book would be a biography of famed NHL and WHA goaltender Gilles “Gratoony the Loony” Gratton.  I was getting ready to write to him to see if the idea interested him when I noticed on Amazon that his autobiography would be coming out in October.  I was both saddened to lose out on what I thought would be a great research topic and book, and excited to see that his life would finally get the book treatment it deserves.

Undaunted, I moved on to another idea I had been toying with for a while: the 1974 expansion which welcomed the Washington Capitals and Kansas City Scouts into the NHL fold.  A few years ago, I wrote an article for the Society for International Hockey Research about the Caps and Scouts’ four-game exhibition set in Japan, which gave me the opportunity to speak to players such as Ron Lalonde, Mike Lampman, Bernie Wolfe, and Robin Burns.  I was always hoping to expand on that article and explore the first two years those teams competed in the NHL.  It had been so long since I started writing my book on the Seals, that I really had no idea how to even start a book now, so I just started writing random thoughts, analyzing a few statistics, drafting an outline, and before I knew it, I had written twenty pages or so.  With the lessons I’ve learned writing my first book, this one hopefully won’t take me two decades to write.

I also got the opportunity to scour the Internet for awful-looking pictures of hockey players just for your amusement.  Rest assured, I found some real doozies, including some pretty atrocious cards featuring this week’s subject, Manon Rheaume.  I couldn’t pick just one of these putrid pieces of cardboard, so this week, you get The Very Worst of Manon Rheaume in the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame.

There are also two new articles from the San Mateo Times about the San Francisco Seals’ home opener, which took place in November (huh?) of 1961, along with a print out of the roster which was expected to suit up that night.  The second article describes the game itself, which the Seals lost 8-3 to the Edmonton Flyers.  In a way, it was a chilling omen of things to come.

Until next time, stay gold!