Hi everyone!

This week, we go back to October 7, 1974 and explore the night the Seals creamed their first of two WHA opponents that exhibition season. The WHA had been around for two years by this point, but the NHL still had plenty of venom left to direct at their rebellious counterparts. On this night, former Seals draft pick Ron Chipperfield, newly acquired by the Vancouver Blazers, was front and centre on this night as his old team and new team clashed. Chipperfield would score 330 points in 369 WHA games, so he probably made a good choice to sign with the Blazers, but his old teammates were not exactly impressed by his talents, as you will read in a two-part summary of the first-ever Seals-WHA battle.

As an added Halloween bonus this week, we have added a brand new scary “Overexposed” card, featuring former Washington Capital Steve Konowalchuk, to the Hockey Hall of Shame. Boy, has it been awhile since we’ve inducted one of these things. I think the last induction was way back in March, so I hope you enjoy it, folks!

That’s about it for this week, everyone. Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend, and a Happy Halloween! Until next time, stay gold!

I don’t know who or what has got a hold of Steve Konowalchuk’s jersey, but Steve certainly seems perturbed by this sudden turn of events. I would be looking a little freaked myself if I was in Steve’s place. Just look at the blue part of his jersey, just under the word “Capitals”. I can’t imagine the thing that could make a jersey look like that. Some sort of two-clawed beast, I suppose, but what the hell only has two claws. Three or four claws, sure, I can understand that, but two? That’s just weird.

Then again, I suppose it could be that mean-ass chicken that used to hang out with Link Gaetz when he was playing out in sunny San Jose. You remember that chicken, right?

Oh, yeah, he won first place for something, and I’m guessing it is for pecking the living s#!t out of other chickens, dogs, humans, you name it. Chickens have two claws that shoot out the front, and one at the back, right? I think I’ve found our culprit!

Hi everyone! I have to admit it’s been a pretty great week. First, we finally get a serious offer on our father’s house meaning there is one less responsibility in my life. Hopefully. Probably shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch, but I’m 99% sure the sale is going to go through. And my Habs have actually played pretty well to start the season. Sure, I would be lying if I said this positive trend will continue into mid-2023, but I’ll take what I can get, which, after last season’s debacle, is a welcome relief.

This week is all about the optimism. All about believing that things will get better. Ah, sure, sometimes things don’t actually get any better, but one can’t go through life always believing things will be bad. Take the end of the Seals’ 1974-75 season. Things were definitely looking up in the Bay Area. The team was playing more competitive hockey. Rookies were playing a major role in the team’s success. Both Gilles Meloche and Gary Simmons turned in strong performances in goal. Attendance was up too. So this week, I invite you to check out an uplifting piece from Hugh McDonald of the San Mateo Times. It comes one day after the Seals tied the 105-point L.A. Kings, and it focuses on the Seals’ prospects for the future. Yes, there was a time when the Seals looked primed to remain in Oakland for a long, long time. It didn’t turn out that way, but the article is still an interesting snapshot of what was going on in Bay Area hockey at the time.

Before I close out this week, I have an important announcement. In a future issue of The Hockey News, (likely hitting your news stands in early November), a piece that I wrote about the 1976 Coca-Cola Cup series will be appearing in its legendary pages. My first freelance job! I am very excited about seeing the article in hockey’s longest-running publication, and I hope you all get the chance to check it out.

On that note, have a great weekend, and may all your hockey nights be merry and bright. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Yes, it’s that time of year again when games actually matter and every single loss is literally the end of the world. At least, that’s how it always seems here in Canada where hockey is a matter of life and death every single day. Seriously, after the Leafs lost to Montreal in the season opener, the media was already starting to question if this game would have a serious impact on the Leafs’ playoff hopes.

Game one, folks.

One out of 82.

Eighty-one more games to go and some folks are already thinking the season is over. That’s Canada, folks. How can you not love that?

We’re passionate about the game, it’s true. It’s been a part of our culture for a very long time, and the thought of it slipping away is enough to make any Canadian cringe just a little bit. In the past, we’ve seen our teams pack up and go far, far away, and the thought of losing another franchise is always a possibility.

We also want another Stanley Cup.

Badly.

Seriously, it’s been 29 years since we’ve seen silver, and it’s getting annoying. It might be a sort of inferiority complex beginning to develop here in the Great White North, much like what has always existed in the Bay Area. That great rivalry between Oakland and San Francisco.

No one can argue that the Bay Area has played host to a great number of champions over the last fifty years. There were those great Oakland A’s teams of the 1970s, then the Golden State Warriors took home the NBA championship right after the A’s dynasty ended, followed by the San Francisco 49ers and their five Super Bowl championships in the 1980s and 90s.

San Francisco’s teams continue to thrive in their respective leagues, while Oakland has seen both its hockey and football teams leave town, while their baseball team is on the brink of pulling up stakes.

This week’s article, from the Sport in American History website, was forwarded to me by Tim Hanlon of Good Seats Still Available, and the piece is not only a review of my book on the Seals, but a wonderful history of the Bay Area’s first NHL team, and how Oakland continues to live in the shadow of its bigger, more famous city-brother across the Bay. Click on this link to go to the Sport in American History site and read this fascinating piece.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely itching for some real NHL action. Pre-season games are nice, but let’s face it, unless someone gets illegally bludgeoned over the head and raises a stink on social media, the games are meaningless. After the free-agent frenzy of July, there really ain’t much going on the rest of the summer and early fall. It’s not like I’m expecting my Habs to do much of anything this year, but until we get a few weeks into the season, I can still only wonder if they are going to start the season like the 1970-71 Seals did. You know, go the first nine games without a win and basically playing themselves out of a playoff spot by Halloween.

So, this week, we are going back to Charlie Finley’s first season as Seals owner, and more precisely to that Halloween night I was alluding to. That was the night the Seals finally won a game, 6-1 over the Buffalo Sabres. The Seals launched 48 shots at the goaltending duo of Joe Daley and Roger Crozier, the latter of which had to take over after Daley took a puck to the head and needed a dozen or so stitches to close the gash. The win was the first of four straight for the Seals, who looked absolutely deadly for a very short while, but in the end, the playoffs simply weren’t in the cards. You can read about the Seals’ big night right here.

Hope you have yourselves a great weekend! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I feel like crap. I’ve felt like crap all day. Stuffy, runny nose, sore throat, sneezing. Uh. I’ve probably gone through two boxes of Kleenex in the last 24 hours. I was seriously thinking of posting a short message tonight telling all of you that I would not be posting anything tonight. And then, after putting my daughter to bed and turning on the TV I found enough energy to plunk myself down in front of my laptop to at least consider maybe starting the process of adding something new to the site. And then it dawned on me as the fog of my cold slowly began to fade away…

Like the title of this week’s blog entry states, what you are about to read is an embarrassing admission. Would you believe that after posting articles on the Seals for the last six years, I have never posted anything about the infamous Barry Cummins-Bobby Clarke stick-swinging incident from December 1973? Needless to say, that realization shook me out of my Vicks-induced stupor. Yes, I, Steve Currier, who has literally written the book on the Seals, and who went into the incident in great detail, forgot to include a snapshot of that fateful night on this site. Well, that shocking injustice is going to be rectified today as I am finally posting a long-overdue article on the moment the famous (sort of) feud between the Seals and Flyers was born.

For those of you unfamiliar with one of the top ten most remembered moments in Seals history, rookie California defenseman Barry Cummins took exception to Bobby Clarke (allegedly) nicking him with his stick. Cummins went ballistic and slashed Clarke over the head opening up a 24-stitch gash and drawing the ire of several members of the Flyers. You can read all about the “slugfest” right here.

That’s about it for this week. Just a few final reminders before I sign off. If you haven’t done so already (and if you’ve bought my new book When the NHL Invaded Japan), I ask that you leave some feedback on any website you can find, whether it is Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, or some other lesser-known site. Feedback is extremely helpful and greatly appreciated, and get this, it’s free! If you haven’t already picked up a copy of my book, you can do so by reaching out to me on this site, or by placing an order on my other website Coca-ColaCup76.com where you can find lots of rare photos and articles, as well as a couple of links to interviews I have recently done regarding the Capitals and Scouts’ memorable voyage to Japan.

As always, thank you for visiting the site, and thank you for your support!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! The Seals were never terribly successful against the Montreal Canadiens, especially at the famous Forum, but in 1971-72, thanks to a rookie goalie by the name of Gilles Meloche, the Seals managed to tie the Habs three times in their five-game season series. The most dramatic and controversial of those three draws was the Habs-Seals tilt from February 16, 1972. It was a somewhat sloppy contest that featured three “delay of game” penalties, one of which pissed off Seals coach Vic Stasiuk because it may have cost his team a win and his goaltender a shutout. According to reports in the following day’s Montreal Gazette, Meloche beat out Yvan Cournoyer to an errant puck, and in the process knocked the puck into the crowd. According to NHL rules a goaltender is not allowed to toss the puck into the crowd, intentionally or not. Of course, on the ensuing power-play Pete Mahovlich scored to tie the game at 1-1, which is how the contest ended. The Gazette claimed that Meloche “deliberately” tossed the puck into the crowd. Meloche claimed he was just trying to dump the puck out of the Seals’ zone. Were the Seals screwed, or were Seals just screwy for thinking they had a case? I’ll leave that up to you to decide. So this week, two new articles from that February 17, 1972 Montreal Gazette, both of which you can read right here. They are a couple of beauties! You’ll love reading these.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I’m going to do something a bit different this week, as I’m not really adding anything Seals-related to the site. Rather, I’m taking this opportunity to announce the launch of my new website, Coca-ColaCup76.com! As you can probably guess by the site’s name, it is all about the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup series of 1976, between the Washington Capitals and Kansas City Scouts. It isn’t as vast a site as Golden Seals Hockey, as it is meant to promote my new book on the Capitals and Scouts’ first two NHL seasons and their memorable trip to Japan, but there are still lots of goodies to be found, notably not one but TWO interviews I have recently done about the book. The first interview is of course the one I did with Tim Hanlon of Good Seats Still Available, and the second one, which was recorded less than two weeks ago, was with Mike Vogel of Break the Ice, a Washington Capitals-themed podcast. I think you will find that both interviews were very unique in that much of what was discussed in one, was not at all discussed in the other. In other words, not a whole lot of overlap. What you get is about two-and-a-half total hours of great stories, insight, and banter about what was a terribly underappreciated and mostly forgotten footnote of NHL history.

You will also find several rare photos from the Coca-Cola Cup series, courtesy of former KC Scout Robin Burns. Many of these photos do not appear in the book, so you are all in for a real treat. There are also some fantastic newspaper articles detailing each of the four games played in Japan. You can also order autographed copies of the book directly from me. Like I said, lots of goodies, indeed, and I’ll add a few things here and there as well!

Umm… I’m touched that you are still reading what I’ve posted, but seriously, why are you still here? What are you waiting for? DUDE, GO TO COCA-COLACUP76.COM NOW!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! What exactly made Christmas Eve 1968 so significant, you ask? Well, I will get to that in just a minute, but first a little anecdote. So, this week is the second of my two weeks of holidays, and with my wife at work, and my son still at home awaiting school to start, I’ve been on duty taking care of him. Overall, it was an ok week if you take away the non-stop rain and stomach flu I suffered through the first two days. On Wednesday, I recorded a podcast episode with the Washington Capitals’ Mike Vogel (“Break the Ice”… more details on that in the coming days), and things started looking up. On Thursday, we played mini-putt, had some McDonalds, played outside a bit. Today, we had nothing really special planned so I decided to take him shopping at Canadian Tire, Dollarama, and any other store that struck our fancy at the Carlingwood Mall. We got all we needed to get done. I finally recycled that old car battery that died last winter, I got a new bin for my Hockey News back issues, and I even picked up a few new books for the kids’ bedtime. All in all, everything went smoothly until we get back home. Just as I’m about to unlock the front door, my son tells me he can’t find his favorite teddy bear, Snowy. He’s had this bear since he was one, and it is his most prized possession. He often takes it with him when we go places (against my wishes as I know that if he loses it, his world will literally come to an end). He goes back to the car to retrieve it, and, Jesus Murphy, it isn’t there! How could this happen? I’ve always been so careful to make sure that bear was within arm’s length of my son. This moment, standing at my front door holding my keys, I just kept thinking, “No, this can’t have happened!” So, after having suffered about four simultaneous heart attacks realizing my son is never going to ever sleep again, and that my wife is probably going to kill me when she arrives home from work, we jump back into the car praying that Snowy is still at the mall, somewhere. Of course, my son is six years old, so he has the memory skills of a 97-year-old man with a severe case of amnesia, so pinpointing Snowy’s last-known whereabouts proves to be a challenge the Criminal Minds team would be hard-pressed to overcome.

My son remembered last having Snowy at Dollarama, so we spend about 30 minutes scouring every inch of the joint without finding a trace of Snowy. The clerks have seen nothing. The shelves contain no Snowy either. Disappointed and feeling a fifth heart attack coming on, I desperately ask my son if he remembers having his bear at the book store we visited afterward. He finally remembers that he thinks he sort of maybe walked out of Dollarama with the bear after all. So off we go to the book store full of hope. Sure enough, there is the bear behind the counter. Never thought that finding a tattered, smelly old bear could be like being brought back to life by a defibrillator, but I learned something today. And Snowy is never coming in my car again!

Now, back to this week’s new article. On Christmas Eve 1968, some Seals fans may have felt a bit weak in the knees once they found out that their lovable losers had escalated the West Division ranks and were in a second-place tie with the Los Angeles Kings. After getting over that initial shock, the fans got used to the idea of their team actually deserving that spot as the Seals began winning games regularly and beating some impressive competition from the East Division. On the night of December 23, 1968, Gary Jarrett’s 15th goal of the season occurred at the 29-second mark of the opening frame, and the Seals never looked back. You can read all about the Seals’ big night here.

Anyway, that’s it for me this week. Hope you’ve all had a great summer and that you are able to have one great final long weekend before slipping into fall. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Not much going on in the hockey world these days, so let’s get right to this week’s update, shall we.

In this week’s update, we go back to 1973. At that time, Charlie Finley had been in charge of the California Golden Seals for almost three years, but he had finally had enough of his money-bleeding hockey team. His first season at the top was an absolute disaster, a 20-53-5 dumpster-fire season that started off with a nine-game winless streak and ended with the first-overall draft pick becoming Guy Lafleur and going to Montreal. Year two was much better, attendance was up, and the Seals flirted with a playoff spot, but finished the year on an eight-game winless skein. Then came 1972-73, which started with half the team bolting to the WHA, and cratered with a pathetic 16-46-16 record. I have to give Finley credit for putting up with that much misery and failure for that long. That said, the franchise had become a miserable wreck mostly due to his own managerial incompetence and staggering thriftiness, so maybe he deserved whatever fate he was subjected to.

In this week’s Seals article, we go back to the March 2, 1973 issue of the Hockey News where Geoffrey Fisher recaps what had been arguably the Seals’ worst-ever season (and that would have been an inarguable fact had the Seals not ended the year on a four-game winning streak, which happened after the article had been written). You can download the piece here.

There won’t be an update next week as I will be on holiday with the family and lucky to have the slightest Internet connection. Might be able to check the occasional email or catch up on the daily Wordle, but not much more.

Hope you all have a great final two weeks of summer. Until next time, stay gold!