McFarland Press, 2021, 328 pages

Anyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for team histories and season reviews. Not surprisingly, both of my books to date are exactly that. Biographies are interesting, sure, but I feel they all too often hold back and skimp on the detail. I feel that I get a sense of who I’m reading about, but that they are not being totally honest. Team and season histories are the opposite; they overturn rocks and let what is found underneath crawl out. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, but it’s always interesting. For a sports nerd like me, there are statistics a-plenty, and obscure facts that I can break out at dinner conversations.

That brings me to this review of John G. Robertson’s 2021 tome Hockey’s Wildest Season: The Changing of the Guard in the NHL, 1969-70 (McFarland Press) The book covers not only each of the NHL’s teams during the 1969-70 season, but also the years immediately preceding the Boston Bruins’ triumphant Stanley Cup run.

Before reading this book, I had already read two of John’s previous works, 2016’s The Games That Changed Baseball and 2018’s Too Many Men on the Ice, the latter focusing on the 1978-79 Boston Bruins and their rivalry with the Guy Lafleur-era Montreal Canadiens. I knew going in that I was going to be left satisfied with Robertson’s latest work.

Why am I mentioning it here on a website devoted the California Golden Seals? Seals fans will be thrilled to know that the book contains two sections specifically related to the club. In the first of these sections, chapter 19 in fact, Robertson delves into the Seals’ ownership problems, as well as many of the Seals’ key contributors that season, notably defenseman Harry Howell, goaltender Gary Smith, and coach Fred Glover. The Seals were a team with many problems that season, and they really only qualified for the playoffs because the rest of the West Division (with the exception of St. Louis) did nothing to really wow their home crowds. This being the year of the tie, the Seals squeaked into the playoffs because the fifth-place Philadelphia Flyers played to 24 draws and cost themselves points throughout the season. Robertson goes into the Flyers’ bizarre season as well, not to mention the many other strange occurrences that year such as how the Rolling Stones nearly cost the L.A. Kings two points, how the Montreal Canadiens missed the playoffs despite racking up 92 points, and how the New York Rangers defied the odds and qualified for the playoffs on the very last day of the regular season.

Of even greater interest to Seals fans, in my opinion, is the chapter on the 1969-70 quarterfinal series. Robertson goes into great detail about the Seals’ embarrassing four-game sweep at the hands of Michel Brière and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Brière, who was tragically and fatally injured in a car crash shortly after the Stanley Cup was awarded to Boston, gets some much deserved ink here. I learned many things about the young man who had manhandled the Seals and done much the same against St. Louis in the West Division final.

For those of you who love the Boston Bruins, and especially the legendary Bobby Orr, you will be very happy reading this book as the Bruins get lots of much-deserved attention. An especially interesting chapter near the end of the book focusses on the legendary photos of Orr flying through the air like a bird as his overtime shot beat Glenn Hall to win the Stanley Cup. Robertson rightly gives more ink to those who made an impact during the year, so the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, and Montreal Canadiens, and St. Louis Blues get lots of attention, while the last-place Los Angeles Kings and Toronto Maple Leafs seem like afterthoughts, much like they were during that crazy season. The Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, and Pittsburgh Penguins of that era, whom almost no one talks or writes about, get a fair amount of attention too. The Seals might get the most attention of all the expansion teams.

By the end of the book, you feel like you’ve got a good handle on what happened during this unique season, but despite all the detail, you don’t feel overwhelmed, exactly how a good history book should feel like.