Hi everyone! Most of you reading this right now have never met me, but if you’ve been to this site a few times over the last eight years, I’ve shared some of my philosophies about hockey, family, and life in general. I’m not saying I’ve every shared anything truly profound, but today I do have some wisdom to impart, so read carefully.

One thing I don’t like doing is getting overconfident, especially when it comes to my sports teams. I’ve learned that when you start feeling overconfident, things are always going to head south. When an opponent seems like an easy two points, I never get excited. If a rookie goalie with zero experience is suiting up for the opposition, I don’t start licking my chops. When my Habs skate out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first period, I always get this overwhelming feeling of dread, because I just know that that three-goal lead is going to disappear slowly but surely. I don’t know the specifics of what is about to take place, but I know it is going to be bad. Especially in the playoffs, you can bet that if things are going just a little too well for your team, something bad is going to happen. You might say I have this sense of foreshadowing. For those of you who might have skipped English class the day this term was presented (probably as you were reading Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm, or something), foreshadowing is when there are hints of important events that will happen later in a play or novel.

I immediately got this feeling of foreshadowing when I read John Porter’s game summary from the December 13, 1971 Oakland Tribune. The Seals had just beaten the Boston Bruins, 4-2, and the Seals were so amazed by their performance, not only that night, but since the start of the season. Of course, this was the year the club sat in a playoff spot most of the season, only to witness everything fall apart all around them. In my opinion, the turning point of the season happened February 23 when the Seals blew a 6-1 lead to those same Bruins, and lost 8-6. The Seals had already been in the middle of a winless streak, but this game just deflated the team and they never recovered. This week’s article is actually the second one describing the events of December 13, but this one contains far more quotes, and this is what I found most fascinating, since I knew how the rest of the season was going to turn out. To read this week’s article, just click on this link.

Hope you’re having yourselves a great weekend! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I recently came across a great article about the Seals in, of all places, the Atlanta Journal. And no, in case you’re wondering there is no Atlanta anywhere near the Bay Area. I’m of course talking about Atlanta, Georgia, a place that, at the time the article was written, had been a member of the NHL for about a year and a half. What can I say, the article’s writer, Dick Beardsley, nailed it. I’m somewhat surprised, however, that the Seals would be so prominent in his radar that he would write an article about them rather than Bobby Orr, Bobby Clarke, or Bobby Hull. In Beardsley’s article from January 23, 1974, he wonderfully summarizes the turmoil that had encompassed the Seals since the very beginning of the season. Ivan Boldirev gets the spotlight in this piece as his participation in the controversial Mind Dynamics program is discussed, and ridiculed, by his teammates. Something about seeing things in colours and how it can make you look at life more positively. Of course, everyone on the team was chasing wins rather than rainbows, but in the end, no one really caught anything.

What I found interesting in the article was how there seemed to be this simmering feeling of tension between everyone in the Seals dressing room. The quotes you will read in the article could be just innocent ribbing between jocks, but something tells me there was an underlying feeling of anger and resentment. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever read another article that contained so much uneasiness without actually having any angry exclamation marks. When you read the article you feel as though the team really had given up hope, which is understandable, of course. This takes place just weeks before Charlie Finley sold the Seals to the NHL, and everyone was getting quite fed up with what was going on in Oakland. To read this great article, head on over to the articles section.

Have a great rest of the weekend, and we’ll see you all back next week. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I was watching Montreal against Los Angeles the other day, and I was amazed to find out that when the horn sounded to signal the end of the game, Montreal’s rookie defenseman Lane Hutson had actually logged thirty minutes of ice time. He had just seven games of NHL experience, including the game that night, so it was an impressive outing for the 20-year-old. There was of course a very logical reason for Hutson’s huge effort. It helped that coach Martin St. Louis likes to give his young players every opportunity to shine, but it was also due in part to an injury to number one defenseman Mike Matheson early in the contest. That said, St. Louis could have called on someone with more experience to log those extra minutes, but Hutson was given the opportunity and he took full advantage looking he did this sort of thing every night. Something tells me that by the end of this season, he will have done so quite often.

Hockey is a sport where a player is often asked to step it up or take one for the team. I’m sure it was never easy when a Seals goaltender was asked to step up considering most nights there was usually somewhere in the neighbourhood of 35 or 40 shots (often more!) directed at the Oakland cage, so when Gilles Meloche was forced to take over for Marv Edwards, who was injured near the end of warm-up, Meloche probably wasn’t too thrilled, but he did a great job nonetheless. On this night, October 24, 1972, Meloche did his best to keep the Seals in the game, but the end result was a 5-0 defeat to the hometown Kings. This week’s article was penned by Oakland Tribune sportswriter John Porter, and you can read it here.

I hope you’ve all been enjoying the start of the new NHL season, and hopefully your favourite team is not Colorado or Nashville (Seriously, what the hell’s going on there?). Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Yes, it is the first week of October, so you know what that means: new NHL season! So many story lines yet to be unveiled, old records getting set to fall, a new Stanley Cup champion to be crowned… I love the start of the new NHL season. Everyone has a chance to win, optimism runs rampant in every city. Sure, by the end of the month, a lot of people are going to be terribly disappointed in their team’s performance, but as we saw last year with Edmonton, you can never really count anyone out until after the All-Star Game. It’s also the first year in which I’m hoping to get my son excited about pro sports. He seemed interested in watching the Cup final last year, so hopefully, that enthusiasm hasn’t waned. And if he gets excited about hockey, it may be enough to persuade him to put on his pajamas early and not in the 30 seconds before it is time to go to bed. So, win-win…

Because it is the dawn of a brand new season, let’s go back to Game One of the 1968-69 season when the Minnesota North Stars visited the undefeated (!) Seals. Yes, you read that correct, the Seals entered their second season undefeated (6-0-2 in exhibition play!). The regular season didn’t get off to a great start, as you will read, but the ship was eventually righted, and a couple new guys emerged as key performers. You wouldn’t have thought it though based on how the Seals performed in the season opener, which you can read about right here.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week and are in the midst of an equally wonderful weekend. We’ve had a very nice stretch of weather the last few days, mostly sunny and in the neighbourhood of 20 degrees (Celcius, that is…), so I can’t complain much. This week, I’ve added a new article from the Oakland Tribune‘s Spence Conley from December 20, 1969. The Seals have been on a three-game undefeated streak at home, and the Chicago Black Hawks came to town, but that also meant a very tough test for the third-year Seals. Bobby Hull was still at the peak of his form, and Tony Esposito had emerged as the best goaltender in the league that year, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when the Hawks cruised to a 4-0 victory despite the Seals’ Gary Smith’s best efforts to keep the score down. This was also the night Carol Vadnais relinquished his heavyweight title, so to speak, to the Hawks’ Keith Magnuson, so there was a lot going on in this game. You can read all about it in the articles section.

If you have a chance to hit the county fair circuit this week, take advantage of whatever little nice weather we have left, that is if your area is lucky enough to be experiencing some sunshine and higher temperatures. We’re certainly hoping to do so tomorrow after getting delayed today due to an incident involving medication from a recent tooth cleaning at the vet’s, someone (who shall remain nameless) thinking I hadn’t (but had) given said medication to the feline patient, two feuding cats, a nasty bite to the hand, and an early-morning trip to the hospital for pills and an IV. Not to worry, I was in the middle of Zoom meeting and didn’t get bit, and the bitten human (who shall still remain nameless) will be just fine, just needing a day off from work. A day at the fair will do us all some good, I believe. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! So first, I should probably explain this week’s title. You see, I’ve been on a bit of a Robert Johnson kick lately. For those of you who don’t know about Robert Johnston, you should head on over to YouTube right now to take a listen. He was a great Delta blues singer and guitarist from the 1930s, and his finger prints are all over the greatest rock ‘n roll stars of all time: the Stones, Dylan, Cream, ZZ Top, the list goes on. There are only 41 known recorded songs from Johnson (12 of which are alternate takes), so you can listen to his complete works in less than two hours. I bought a box set of his complete works at the library for just five bucks, and I have greatly enjoyed listening to it. I was blown away by how it sounds like Johnson is right there in the room with you. Just him and his guitar. No fancy studio sweetening. No overdubs. No bass. No drums. Just a man and his guitar. There are haunting stories that claim Johnson wasn’t much of a guitar player until one day at a crossroad he cut an unholy deal with the Devil, a recurring character in many of Johnson’s songs. According to legend, Johnson developed his incredible skill almost overnight. Sadly, Johnson, like many other music legends, lived a very short life — he died at just 27 — and left us wondering what else he could have accomplished had he lived longer. His recordings from 1936 and 1937 are the only ones that exist, and they are magical. One of his songs is called “Malted Milk” and the opening line of the song is “I keep drinkin’ malted milk tryin’ to drive my blues away,” which inspired this week’s title.

Where am I going with this? Well, in researching material for my next book, I came across a story of how referee Dave Newell was once clunked on the head with a frozen chocolate malt during a Seals-Leafs game. I don’t hear the word “malt” used very often except on the famous candy bar, and in the Robert Johnson song. You might even say that Johnson and the Seals met at some sort of bizarre Delta blues-NHL crossroad. This week, I’ve posted a San Francisco Examiner article about that infamous game from February 19, 1975. The Seals had every opportunity to take down their division rivals from up North, but failed, and you can read all about it here.

Until next time, check out Robert Johnson on YouTube, or better yet, pick up one of the compilation albums on which he appears, and sit back and enjoy! Stay gold!

Hi everyone! It’s been a rather emotional day. It always is when a colleague is fired. You often don’t see it coming, and that was certainly the case today as this colleague was an important cog in the company, and the void will be huge. At this afternoon’s Zoom meeting, everyone just sat silently staring into their computer camera lens or looking down at their laps for about 15 minutes. It was probably the quietest meeting I’ve ever attended, and it felt like I was hanging around in a morgue. I was glad when it was over. Not sure what the future will bring, but I’m looking forward to getting next week started so we can at least address the elephant in the room and how we plan on moving forward.

Today’s sudden events had me thinking about the time Fred Glover lost his job with the Seals, the first time around. No one really saw that coming either despite the Seals’ poor start to the season. Charlie Finley himself had given his vote of confidence to Glover, although as we all know, that can sometimes be just like the kiss of death. Still, to fire a coach three games into the season is never expected. This week, I’ve posted an article from October 17, 1971, as the Seals were sitting 0-1-2, and last in goals against in the NHL. This piece, from John Porter of the Oakland Tribune, explores the reasons behind Glover’s sudden dismissal, and you can find it right here.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all enjoyed a wonderful week, and had yourselves a great Labour Day weekend. And if you have kids under the age of 18, congratulations on shipping them off to school once again. Ah, time to get back to normal! Hockey season is just around the corner, folks. Even started seeing a pre-season schedule on TSN.ca a few days ago, so yes, normalcy is in the cards, so who couldn’t be happy about that.

This week I’m delving a little into what I consider to be one of the Seals’ biggest love-hate relationships. It was no secret that the Boston Bruins often ran roughshod over the Seals, especially in the years when Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito ran the power play. Boston regularly put up 50 or 60 shots on goal in those days, and they often took games by wide margins, which surely angered or frustrated more than a few people associated with the Seals. At the same time, however, Seals management must have loved it when the Bruins were planning a visit to Oakland, because it meant a huge increase in ticket sales. For instance, in 1970-71, the Bruins drew two sell-out crowds and a third crowd of over 10,000, something I can’t recall ever hearing about with any other team, including Montreal and Philadelphia. The Bruins definitely had a large following in the Bay Area. The Bruins were also the victims in some of the Seals’ greatest victories, such as Gilles Meloche’s famous 2-0 debut, and the 6-2 pummelling they suffered two years later which ended goaltender Ross Brooks’s record 14-game winning streak. You never really knew what was going to happen when the Seals and Bruins tangled.

This week’s article from the Oakland Tribune‘s John Porter is a lead-in to the Seals’ second sell-out of 1970-71. Unfortunately, like most other games against Boston that year, this one also did not go well, and the Bruins grabbed an easy two points. The article does feature many quotes from Charlie Finley, in his first year with the club, so it is a great read.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and take advantage of those last few days of fun and sun. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Well, it has been an interesting couple of weeks. Despite some dreary days weather-wise, we ended up having a tremendous holiday in the Eastern Townships, doing lots of swimming at our hotel, visiting a zoo, picking up some new clothes, and spending time with family. We also came home with a new cat, a teeny little ginger female named Jodie (the kids call her Fluffball), who weighs about two pounds, peed on my desk chair, and made my basement office smell like a barn (cat pee has a way of doing that). You would think I’d be annoyed by this turn of events, but I actually love that little cat, since she wants nothing more than to be held, and she’s given me a reason to take some little breaks during the work day. Having a new cat, not to mention still basking in the afterglow of a week’s vacation has made my week rather pleasant, and I feel rejuvenated. It’s been a nice way to conclude the summer.

The Seals had a similar moment of cleansing way back in the summer of ’74. Charlie Finley had sold the Seals a few months earlier and taken his white skates with him. New Pacific blue and gold uniforms were purchased, giving the team a much-needed makeover. High-priced players were traded away in favour of younger, and cheaper talent, which in the end, gave the team what amounted to a hockey blood transfusion. Everyone was happy to be at work. Everyone felt like good work was being done, and good times would be the norm rather than the exception going forward. It was a good time to be associated with the Seals. This week, I’ve posted a new article from the Fremont Argus all about the Seals’ interesting summer, and you can read it right here.

Until next time, have a great end to the summer, and if your kids haven’t started school yet, remember that good times are just around the corner, and the fall is going to be great. Stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful week. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to itch for some hockey right about now. It’s only the middle of August and training camps don’t open for another month or so, which means I’m chomping at the bit right now. All I can do to pass the time until the first puck drop is dive into things like this site, look for great deals on vintage hockey cards on eBay, and crack open a book hoping to gain some insight on something sports related, or… related to anything really. I just want my hockey back is all I’m saying. And no, sorry to all you patriotic types out there, the Olympics just ain’t gonna cut it either. Sure, I can sit down and watch an afternoon of track and field, judo, or basketball, but it just ain’t the same as an NHL game. Going to the beach, visiting family and friends, and playing mini-golf has been nice, but sometimes you just need a good old hockey game. So, if you’re feeling the same mid-summer blahs that I am, I hope this week’s update will provide some good cheer, at least for a little while.

To continue with our recent focus on the Seals’ training camp and pre-season performances, we are heading back to September 1973, as the team was looking to put its stinker 1972-73 season behind them. The Seals held their training camp in Kingston, Ontario, home to my alma mater, Queen’s University. I love Kingston for its old-timey vibe, its waterfront, and Princess Street, which when I was there, was home to more used CD and video game stores that you could shake a stick at. Not sure how the place has changed since then since I’ve only been to Kingston a handful of times in the last twenty years, but I’m sure the heart of downtown still beats vibrantly. The old arena is only a few blocks from where I used to live, and that’s where the Seals used to play some of their pre-season games. Had I known that at the time, I probably would have visited the place to do a little research and even visit the Hockey Hall of Fame located in the same building (don’t quote me on that exactly…). This week, I’ve posted an article detailing two pre-season games played in Kingston, one a win lopsided win, one a demoralizing loss. You can read all about the games right here.

I’ll be taking off for a one-week vacation with the family next weekend, so there won’t be an update for a little while, so until next time, stay gold!