Hi everyone! There will be no new Seals material posted to the site this weekend since I will be busy preparing for the Eastern Ontario Writers’ Festival, but I did want to post an important new message. I’ve mentioned the festival before, but I wanted to share a few details in case any of you live in the Ottawa area and are looking to hobnob with over 40 local authors. There will also be draws and giveaways, and of course plenty of books for sale. So, if you’ve worn out your copies of my books (I’m flattered, by the way), feel free to stop by and pick up new copies, and I’ll even sign it for free. Can’t get a better deal than that, am I right?
Date: Saturday, September 13, 2025
Hours: 1-5 pm
Location: Casselman Public Library at 764 Brébeuf, Casselman, Ontario (about 30 minutes east of Ottawa)
Parking: Lots of free parking in front of the library, across the library at the J.R. Brisson / De Guire Hall Arena and behind the library (École élémentaire catholique de Casselman).
For more information on which authors will be appearing, and what genres they specialize in, please click on the EOWF’s Instagram link.
Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend! This week, we’re going back to January 15, 1971. The Seals are just coming off a 1-1 tie with Toronto, a game in which Gary Smith made an incredible 50 saves. It was the conclusion of a brutal 10 games out of 12 stretch on the road which, in retrospect, killed the Seals’ playoff chances. The Seals’ first game back at home was against the New York Rangers, a team that was on the rise, and loaded with all-stars. But the Rangers were not the Seals’ sole focus that night. Fred Glover announced earlier that day that the Seals were abandoning their intention of broadcasting any more games on TV for the remainder of the season. Head on over to the articles section to read this week’s article, provided courtesy of Bob Marceau. Thanks again, Bob!
On a sadder note, you’ve probably already heard the news by now that Hall-of-Fame goaltender Ken Dryden has passed away following a battle with cancer. I mention this because Dryden had a few links to the Seals. Both of these anecdotes are in my Seals book. I remember reading in the Hockey News during the 1973-74 season, when Dryden was off following a contract dispute with the Canadiens, that the Seals were rumoured to be trying to acquire him in exchange for Gilles Meloche. I’m not sure how credible this story is, but it is fascinating to think how such a trade could have altered both franchises. I also remember a story Gary Simmons told me about a time when he and Dryden were chatting, and Dryden admitted to Simmons that if he ever got traded to California (or perhaps it was Cleveland), he would consider retiring. I’m not sure how serious such a threat would have been, but it goes to show just how much of an uphill battle it was for Simmons, Meloche, and other Seals goalies to guard the cage, and the kind of respect the very best goaltenders in the league had for their California brethren.
Hi everyone! Well, the dog days of summer are coming to an end, and the kids are gearing up to go back to school. The hot, sticky weather is being ushered out and replaced with nippy winds and heavy rain. Training camp is just around the corner. My 2025-26 Hockey News preview magazine is somewhere in the mail. I don’t know about any of you, but I am looking forward to hockey season starting up again. I like watching Sportscentre and all in the mornings, but it has definitely been lacking something the last two months or so. I’m especially looking forward to this season since my Montreal Canadiens are looking stronger than at any time in the last twenty years. Ok, they may not be contenders quite yet, but I really feel that this team has more potential for greatness than any other since 1993. Time will tell if that potential is ever realized, but for now, I will keep hoping.
This year’s Canadiens remind me somewhat of the 1971-72 Golden Seals, who had the youngest team in the NHL, and potential for greatness at every position. I have always wondered how the franchise would have ended up had the World Hockey Association not raided its roster. This week, I’ve posted an article from January 30, 1972 from the Oakland Tribune‘s John Porter. The Seals were in Vancouver for the first game of a home-and-home series, and were coming off an impressive 3-0 win over the Maple Leafs at the Coliseum. Little did anyone know that this Vancouver game would be the high point of the Seals’ season. Thanks to Bob Marceau for sending me this week’s article!
Hi everyone! This week, we’re going back to January 23, 1976. The Seals were in the midst of a 7-1-1 run, easily the longest stretch of success in franchise history. The Kansas City Scouts were in Oakland hoping to turn around their season, which had gone badly off the rails since late December, ironically enough, the last time the teams had played each other in Oakland, a 3-1 win for K.C. Rookie goalie Bill Oleschuk made his NHL debut for Kansas City, replacing Denis Herron, who had been hospitalized with kidney stones brought on from an excessive consumption of milkshakes designed to help him put on weight. True story. The Seals bombed Oleschuk with 52 shots, yet given the Seals’ dominance, the game was surprisingly close. Dennis Maruk scored with just 33 seconds remaining to give the Seals a 4-1 win. Even though Oleschuk had an incredible (yet ultimately disappointing debut), he did not appear in another game that season. In fact, his next NHL appearance didn’t occur until December 10, 1977, almost two full years later! Like I said, sometimes life ain’t fair. You can read this week’s article here. Thanks to Bob Marceau for sending it over to me.
I will be away next week on a camping trip with the family, so I won’t be able to update the site, but I will be back the following weekend, so come back then to see what I’ll be up to. Until next time, stay gold!
Hi everyone! I’ve been off for the last week just enjoying the summer weather. I have to admit it has been nice knowing that my manuscript is finally in the can, and that it is now in someone else’s hands, so I’ve actually been able to take some time to relax, enjoy the little things, and indulge in some other passions. I took in some vintage hockey, caught up on my Society for International Hockey Research annual journal, and even took the kids to the Canadian Experimental Farm and Museum. I also had an opportunity to search the Internet for some Seals odds and ends.
As promised, I have a surprise for all of you! I recently stumbled upon a very short, but very cool black-and-white clip of the 1968-69 Oakland Seals at training camp. I think you will all enjoy it very much as it goes beyond the typical game footage we’ve all seen. In this clip, the players look directly at the camera, which I feel helps them make a more human connection with the viewer. What’s interesting is that the players are wearing what looks to be the old San Francisco Seals home and away jerseys. Even more interesting is that we get actual video evidence of Fred Glover scrimmaging with his players, something former Seals always mention when they are asked about their former coach. While we don’t actually see him handling a puck, we do see him in a SF Seals jersey, so I think we can assume he was going to be participating in a scrimmage at some point. Very neat stuff, indeed, if you are a Seals fan on the lookout for rare footage. Check out the clip here at the Internet Archive. As an added bonus, if you wait until the very end of the video, you will find suggestions for other vintage hockey clips, which you will likely also greatly enjoy.
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!
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!
