Hi everyone and welcome back! And welcome to August as well! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve caught up with you, and it’s good to be back. Summer time is usually a slower time for me, and updates are not as frequent. Holidays get in the way, weekend activities start popping up everywhere, and this summer there has been the added responsibility of finishing up my manuscript for what I hope will be my third book, tentatively entitled Mucking in the Corners: Unearthing the 1970s Quirkiest Hockey Tales. As the title implies, it is a slight departure from my last two books, both of which were essentially franchise histories. I’m still focusing on the disco decade, which is my favourite period of hockey history, but I’m breaking things down into shorter stories I’ve dug up in newspapers and magazines over the years. This time, I’ve been looking to flex my storytelling muscle and find new ways of incorporating colourful words such as “meh,” “brain fart” and “plodding pain in the ass” into my work. I hope I succeeded! Seriously though, the manuscript was due August 1, which also happened to coincide with the start of a week’s vacation for me, so I’ve been looking forward to the first day of the month for weeks now. It feels like I’ve just finished a major task, and now I can move on to other things and take a short break before getting back down to brass tacks.

This week, I’ve posted a new Spence Conley article (courtesy of Bob Marceau… thanks!) from February 1969, and it is an interesting review of the Seals’ second NHL season (at least up to just after the All-Star break). There aren’t a lot of positive-toned articles out there about the Seals, so enjoy this one!

Be sure to come back next week because I have a special Seals treat that I can’t wait to share. I promise you will love it! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It’s been an exciting and tumultuous couple of weeks in the NHL, so let’s get down to it, and sort through the fallout. The Florida Panthers did the unthinkable and signed all three of their marquee free agents. Winning two Cups in a row probably helps, but still, I never thought all three were going to be staying.

I’m already getting excited about next season, especially since my Habs have had themselves a very fruitful off-season thus far. I love the fact that they could afford to part with two first-round picks to get themselves an exciting offensive defenseman, Noah Dobson, who can complement the league’s most recent Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson, and help Montreal’s power play. Most years, the Canadiens don’t do much of anything come free-agency season, except sign a plethora of fourth-liners and minor-leaguers who are never going to make an impact. When they do sign someone with a little value to bring to the line-up (hello, Mike Hoffman and Karl Alzner), the signing almost never works out. They almost never go for a really big score à la Nikolai Ehlers, so swinging for the fences with Dobson is an exciting development. And it’s all because the circumstances were just right to pull off a blockbuster deal. Normally, I would never condone trading two first-round picks, but since Montreal’s farm system is so stacked right now, who cares about the 16th and 17th selections.

This week, I’m taking us back to November 11, 1968, and the Seals are embarking on a short leisurely plane ride to St. Louis, except, well… it didn’t exactly turn out that way. To quote the great Curly Howard, the Seals were “a victim of soicumstance.” Everything that could possibly go wrong on a road trip went wrong here: bad weather, naturally, but airline mishaps, and incompetent bus drivers. Not surprisingly, the Seals dropped a 7-0 decision the next day. Head on over to the articles section to read all about the Seals’ road trip from hell. Thanks to Bob Marceau for sending me this great article my way!

I will be taking next week off again in order to work on my manuscript, which is due in a few weeks, so I will catch you all later. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! If you’re a Canadian hockey fan, it’s been a bit of an up-and-down couple of weeks. Just when it seemed like the Edmonton Oilers had momentum on their side, and were going to finally put an end to the country’s ridiculously long Stanley Cup drought, it all fell apart rather dramatically. And now the season is over, and there are 31 teams trying to figure out how they are going to take down the Florida Panthers next years. It is the time of year when some teams, if not all, feel like they have hope for the future, and that in a few months, they will be starting down the same road the Panthers took to get where they are now.

In sticking with the “hope” theme, I’ve posted a new article from the Seals’ last season in the Western Hockey League, and in reading it, you can feel the enthusiasm that was enveloping the entire team. Subscriber Bob Marceau sent me this piece about the Seals’ attendance, and how it was on the rise after the club moved from San Francisco to Oakland, and its brand new Coliseum. I had forgotten the impact the arena had on the club’s fortunes. One one hand, the Coliseum was a NHL calibre rink, and a first-class facility that everyone loved. On the other hand, the rise in attendance likely gave everyone false hope that the Seals were going to succeed in the NHL. We all know how that turned out. During that fateful season of 1966-67, however, it certainly looked as though this NHL thing could be a rousing success. I invite you to read this piece, especially if you are a bit of a stats nut like me.

As an added bonus this week, I’d like to share a few interesting photos of a typewriter (remember those?) once used in the Seals’ office. Thanks to Michael Han for sending them to me, and for allowing me to post them for all of you. Here are a few details regarding the typewriter (quoted from Michael’s last email): “The owner said that he inherited it from a man named Art Biddlecomb (or maybe Bittlecomb) who was a huge hockey fan and bought this off the team’s press agent. The typewriter itself is a 1948 Royal Quiet De Luxe. Its case had an “Air Canada” luggage tag on it. Interestingly, to me, several of the old typewriters I’ve picked up have had luggage tags or even postal/address tags directly on the case. To think that there was a time that you should mail or check something as delicate as a typewriter & it would arrive in working condition.”

Sadly, even after looking through the media guides from the Finley era, I wasn’t able to pinpoint the owner of the typewriter, but if anyone out there knows anything about it, or who owned it, please drop me a line and fill me in!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had yourselves a wonderful week, and have been enjoying the Stanley Cup final. I was so stoked when I saw that both Edmonton and Florida would both be returning to the final round, and I haven’t been disappointed so far. It just means so much more when the teams already have a recent history. The intensity just gets ramped up a couple extra degrees, and every check, every goal, every save means just a little more. I can’t help but think back to Edmonton vs New York in the mid-80s, or Montreal vs Boston in the late 70s, both classic rivalries, and now I can see Edmonton vs Florida becoming another legendary feud. No matter how things turn out in the end, I know that the winning team will have rightfully earned the Cup; there will be no easy games over the next ten days or so.

While the Seals never had a major rivalry with another NHL team, I can imagine they certainly grew frustrated with the New York Islanders. Today, we’re heading back to early November 1972. The expansion Islanders, 1-6-1 on the year, are visiting the Bay Area for the first time, and it wouldn’t take the Seals long to wish their guests fare-thee-well. For some reason, the Seals were snakebit against the Isles that year (and really every year thereafter now that I think of it). By the end of the year, the Isles had just 12 wins, and 33% of them came against California! The Islanders scored just three hat tricks all year, two of which were against the Seals. This first meeting between the cellar-dwellers concluded in a rather prophetic way: a very one-sided Islanders’ win that featured a hat trick against the Seals. It actually wouldn’t be the Seals’ most embarrassing defeat to the future Stanley Cup dynasty (that would come in January), but it wasn’t exactly a banner night either. You can find this week’s article right here.

So that’s it for this week. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend, and have enough time to recover from last night’s double-OT thriller! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Well, it’s that time of year once again. It’s Stanley Cup time, and lo and behold, it feels like deja vu all over again. I honestly never thought we would be seeing Edmonton-Florida, Part II, but here we are. I’m honestly stoked about this year’s final, since last year’s was so damned exciting, and with the way both these teams have been playing lately, who knows how intense this series is going to be. Of course, I will be rooting for Edmonton to bring the Cup back home to Canada, and I can’t wait for the first puck drop on Wednesday. I can only imagine who is going to have one of those legendary games that is going to be written about years later as a turning point in the series. Will McDavid score a highlight-reel goal on an end-to-end rush, and then cap the night off with an OT winner? Will Tkachuk score a natural hatty in the second period to put the Oilers in a deep hole? Who knows?

Now, I know that this intro is a bit of a stretch to segue into this week’s new Seals article, but how else was I going to tie it in to what’s going on in the NHL right now? This week, we go back to January 12, 1969, and the Seals are in the Motor City to take on the Red Wings. The Wings are absolutely smoking hot at this point gunning for a playoff spot after having missed the post-season the previous two years. Very few Wings players were on a hotter streak than the “Big M” Frank Mahovlich, and on this night, he was at his absolute best scoring a career-high four goals. The Oakland Tribune article about the Seals-Wings contest can be found right here. Enjoy!

So here’s hoping one of the Oilers’ superstars, McDavid, Draisaitl, or some unexpected hero pulls off a Mahovlich and piles on the goals against the Panthers and helps bring the Cup back to Canada. My fingers will be crossed! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Now that it’s the playoffs, we’re getting to see teams create new rivalries or rekindle some old ones. One of the reasons why teams start to dislike each other is that they get to play each other several times over a very short period. It also helps that the stakes are so much higher at this time of year, and that every game means something. The Seals, of course, didn’t have many opportunities to play back-to-back games against the same team, mainly because they only made the playoffs twice in their history, but there were a few occasions here and there during the regular season. Today, I bring you a few Lee Susman cartoons from two of these rare home-and-home events, both of which were significant, just not “playoff” significant. The first cartoon, from February 14, 1973, was published between games against the Atlanta Flames. The second cartoon, from March 28, 1973, was published after the Seals miraculously won two in a row, and were gearing up for a back-to-back against Los Angeles. Go check out this week’s cartoons right here!

And happy belated Leafs Elimination Day to all of you who care about such things! I would have posted something on Monday, but the family and were busy, so I decided to wait until my usual update day. But rest assured, I did indeed celebrate with the traditional 8am watching of Sportscentre whilst drinking my morning coffee. What a way to go, right? Once again, my mind was blown. I could go on and on about how wonderful my favourite sports day of the year went, but, at this point, this annual tradition is starting to become a bit sad, so I will just leave it at that, and look forward to the rest of the playoffs. Like last year’s third round, I will be rooting for the Oilers, as will the rest of Canada. I would love nothing more right now than to see Connor McDavid hoist Lord Stanley’s mug over his head, and I will keep my fingers crossed! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! After a short hiatus, I’m back! I took last week off because I was felled by a miserable cold, and also because I needed to get ahead on some of the preliminary steps in setting up my manuscript for eventual publication. The book is still a year away from seeing the light of day, but publishers like getting on top of things as soon as possible, asking for opinions on what the cover will look like, what the book jacket will say, and how the book will be marketed. It’s fun to think about how your work will turn out, I have to admit, but it is daunting to see how many steps need to be taken between now and the book’s arrival. Even though this is the third time I’ve gone through the process, it always seems like there is so much work to get done and not nearly enough time. I will keep you all posted on future developments.

This week, we’re going back to October 25, 1972, and the expansion Atlanta Flames are in Oakland to take on the Seals. It was not a good night, like most nights during that first WHA-depleted-roster season. The Flames, like their expansion cousins from Long Island, were not expected to be in the playoff mix that year, but they were strong defensively, and surprisingly competitive overall. Overall, the Seals went 2-7-1 against the two expansionists, so you get an idea of how much the Golden Ones struggled that year. At that point, however, the season was still young, and no one was really out of the playoff picture just yet. Coach Garry Young put on a brave face and said all the right things to the media about how the team’s future looked bright, and how it was just a question of his players getting more experience, but in retrospect, we all know how things turned out. You can check out this week’s new article right here.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! As you can see by this week’s blog title, I have some good news and bad news to discuss. You can probably guess what the bad news is, if you’ve been following the playoffs. Yes, those dastardly Toronto Maple Leafs somehow managed to not screw things up and finally disposed of the Ottawa Senators, breaking the hearts of my adopted hometown. Booooo! And, of course, I wasn’t too thrilled to watch my Habs bow out in the first round, but I can’t be too bummed out about that since six months ago, I wouldn’t have given them a snowball’s chance in hell at making the playoffs. As one of my colleagues (and a fellow Habs fan) said this week, “I’m just happy they improved… the rest is candy.” Expectations were low this year, but they will be sky high next year, and I’m already looking forward to October.

Speaking of October, I have another reason to get excited about Halloween time. I’m happy to announce that I have secured a publishing deal to have my third book released, tentatively titled Mucking in the Corners: Unearthing the 1970s Quirkiest Hockey Tales. I still have to complete the manuscript so that it fits in with the vision of the publisher, but what I can tell you for sure is that the book will be a series of short stories under the common theme of “forgotten moments and personalities” and that there will be a few Seals tales included as well. I believe that every player — from the game’s legends to its journeymen — has a story to tell, and I hope that the tales I’ve written will tickle ribs and make readers smile. Since I will be on the lookout for photos I can include in the book, if anyone out there owns the rights to any photos featuring NHL or WHA players, and you would like to contribute to my book, I would love to see what you’ve got, and if the photos are a good fit, I will give you credit for your contribution to the finished work. I will keep you all posted on the progress of the book, so stay tuned!

That news was a little out of the blue, I must say. I was hoping to hear from potential publishers later in the spring, if at all. Much like the night Wayne Merrick pumped in a record three goals and three assists versus Washington in early January 1976, I was taken aback by this sudden turn of events. This week, I’ve added a piece published shortly after Merrick’s big night. It is another one of those wonderful fluff pieces that was included in Goal game programs at that time, and like the many of the others I’ve posted to this site, thanks goes out to Pete Manzolillo for not only hanging on to these articles for nearly 50 years, but for also sending them to me so that I could share them with you.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a relaxing Easter weekend. I know I sure did. Got to enjoy some delicious Quebec-style pizza — yes, there is such a thing… and while it is no Cornwall, Ontario style pizza, it is pretty damn good! My bathroom scale had the sad responsibility of informing me upon my return home that I had gained four pounds over the weekend. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been on a bit of a weight-loss-and-healthy-eating journey the last fifteen months, and overall it has been delightful seeing the pounds melt away slowly but surely, so any deviation from my plan makes me cringe. Thankfully, I’ve been able to burn most of those four pounds off this week, so I feel better about that, and I can just accept that once in a while there are going to be times when I can’t avoid salt, sugar, and fat as much as I’d like.

Anyhoo, it’s playoff time once again, and that means that every game means a little more than before. Even a Game One loss sticks in your craw, and as the series progresses, the tension just increases to the point where a heart attack or stroke becomes a real possibility. So let’s relax just a bit, shall we? Let’s look back at some lighter moments in Seals history. This week, I’ve added two new Lee Susman cartoons for your enjoyment. I’m not saying the moments illustrated in these cartoons were light. Oh no, in fact, in one case, the cartoon captured something downright awful, and in the other case, it was merely bad. Either way though, it is an interesting snapshot of what it was like to be following the Seals long before the Internet was ever a thing. Thanks again to Bob Marceau for sending these and all the other Susman cartoons my way.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! This week, we’re continuing our trip through the 1975-76 season and putting the spotlight on one of the Seals’ less-heralded players, the late Bob Girard. I really didn’t know what kind of introduction to write for this week’s article, which I had randomly picked out a few days ago from a couple of articles sent to me by Pete Manzolillo. I thought I would just take a gander at HockeyReference.com to see if today had any special significance in Bobby Girard’s life. Lo and behold, it turns out that April 12 (1949) is his birthday, so I was pretty blown away by the coincidence. In fact, I was actually going to post this yesterday, not at all knowing the significance of April 12, but since I got held up with other things I decided to wait until today. Nevertheless, it turns out that my arbitrary choice of article was rather fitting. Girard’s rookie season ranks as one of the best in franchise history, but since he was a less flashy player than Dennis Maruk and Bob Murdoch, and he was known more for his work in the corners, he received little attention from the press, but Joe DeLoach wrote a nice piece on Girard for one of the Seals’ game programs, which you can read right here.

FYI, I will be away next weekend, so there will be no new posting, but I will be back the following week. Happy Easter to all, if you celebrate the holiday, and if you don’t, please enjoy the four-day weekend. Hopefully, spring will be in full force by that time, and snow storms will be a thing of the past.

Until next time, stay gold!