Since the very earliest days of organized sports, brothers have grown up competing against one another. In many cases, the youngest brother became a goaltender because that was where his older brother told him to do if he wanted to hang out with the older kids. In many other cases, however, both brothers got to skate freely and score a few goals. Sometimes, their paths would cross in junior hockey, and sometimes those paths would cross in the big leagues. In very rare cases, some brothers got to play together, such as the Seals’ Bill and Ernie Hicke, but in most cases, brothers competed for different teams and made it difficult for Mom and Dad to side with one kid or the other.

Mickey Redmond was the first to crack the NHL back in October 1967, and his brother Dick debuted in the early weeks of the 1969-70 season. Mickey moved from the Canadiens to the Red Wings in 1971, and Dick moved from Minnesota to California not long after. The moves did wonders for their careers. Mickey became a two-time 50-goal scorer with the Wings, and Dick became a quality offensive defenseman for the Seals. In February 1972, the brothers faced off in a game that meant a great deal to both teams, who were fighting for playoff spots in their respective divisions. The Seals were coming off an impressive 2-2 draw with Montreal, so a positive result was expected against the less talented Wings, but Mickey had other plans. The elder Redmond scored three times, and almost netted a fourth, so the younger Redmond had no choice but to eat a little crow, especially after the Wings triumphed 8-2. You can read all about the game here.

Well, that’s it for this week. I will be off next week as I will be travelling with the family this Easter weekend, but I will be back soon after. Enjoy the lead-up to the playoffs, and until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Isn’t it great when an underdog, somehow, overcomes the odds and takes down a bigger, meaner opponent? It doesn’t happen often, but if you are a fan of an underdog, those moments stick with you for a long, long time. You feel like you can stand up a little straighter, swagger a bit, chew that gum a bit louder. You know the feeling. Problem is, that feeling don’t last long. Reality eventually sets in and losing becomes the norm again. Where am I going with this? Well, let’s take a trip back to November 15, 1970. The Seals have just taken down the mighty Boston Bruins, the defending Stanley Cup champs. The Seals were talking tall, no doubt about it. It was their fifth win in seven games, and the team was looking like it was going to make a serious run at the playoffs. The Bruins, on the other hand, had different ideas. Not only did the B’s beat the Seals every other time they met that season, all four contests were, well, no contests. This week, you can read all about the Seals’ big win, from the perspective of the losing club, as this article comes from the Boston Globe. Check it out here.

Hope you all enjoy the weekend, and that the weather is warm and pleasant like it is up here in Ottawa. Spring time is just around the corner, and that means the playoffs! May your team be the author of, and not the recipient, of a surprising outcome that allows you to walk tall and chew louder. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! How was your week? If you live in Ontario, it was probably a little shorter than most thanks to Monday’s Family Day. It was a nice opportunity for my family and I to take in a matinee movie (Turning Red, for the kids, of course), eat lots of popcorn, play some arcade games… and then watch my daughter puke up a entire serving of strawberry Fruitopia all over the coach, and then a few seconds later, all over our white carpet, literally two feet away from the bathroom. We suspect it was a little too much sugar on an empty stomach. Here’s a parenting tip for all of you: if you plan on going to the movies with your kids around lunch time, and you plan on letting your kids load up on sugar, make sure they a good lunch first to balance out the good and the bad food. Other than that little incident, it was a nice day, and a relaxing long weekend.

Stability is indeed a nice thing. Spending a relaxing few days with the family, not making any major plans, staying in your pajamas and playing video games on the couch is rewarding. Travelling around is nice too, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it’s nice just take in the comfort your home provides. I imagine former Seals great Gary “Suitcase” Smith probably wished for that stability once in a while. As you can imagine, with a nickname like the one he was christened with, Smith moved around a lot during his career. His four-year stint in Oakland was actually the longest of his professional career. This week, I invite you to head on over to Sports Collectors Daily to read a wonderful, comprehensive career summary of Smith’s career. It’s a long piece, so you might want to pour yourselves a cup of coffee first, but the article is well worth your time. It covers Smith’s entire professional career, from his time as a Toronto Maple Leaf call-up to his very last NHL season as a Winnipeg Jet some fifteen years later. A big thanks again this week to Mark Harris for sending me the link to Stephen Laroche’s article.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! You’ve picked a great day to spend a little time from your busy day with Golden Seals Hockey! This week, I’ve got a double-whammy for you all! Two articles for the price of one, which, considering is zero dollars, is one heck of a great deal, right? The first piece is about Charlie Finley’s attempts to make the Seals relevant. Old Charlie was always up for a wild new marketing ploy, even though most of them failed miserably, or at the very least, were just plain weird. One of his classic moves was taking his legendary “Charlie O.” mule mascot from the baseball A’s and transferring it over to the ice. The problem, I can only assume, is that donkey’s don’t skate. Not in the least. So, what else could Charlie do but hire a couple of dudes, stick them inside a donkey costume, and voilà! The Seals’ new mascot worked out about as well as their previous mascots, Stella and Seymour, the two live seals who spent their short-lived careers literally laying down on the wonderfully cold ice surface of the Oakland Coliseum. This article, courtesy of Mark Harris, features a beautiful picture of the Seals’ mule, and you can take a look at it right here.

The second treat this week is a funny, short story from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan about former Seal great Bill Hicke, who seemed to have a bit of trouble understanding how the autographing procedure worked. From what I gather, he may have had quite the collection of Bill Hicke cards in his personal collection. Why, you ask? You’ll have to check the article out for yourself here. Thanks go out to Pete Manzolillo for sending me the link to this great piece.

Hope you all have a great weekend, and if you are living in Ontario, a great, long Family Day weekend! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! As you may or may not know, I’m working on a new book which I hope to have published in a year or two (the process takes a VERRRRRRY long time). It’s something a little different than what I’ve done before. I decided to look for some overlooked, forgotten, odd, and unusual stories from the 1970s, write some short pieces on each, and put them together to create a sort-of history of the disco decade. If you’ve visited this site a couple of times of the years, you’ve probably figured out by now that I tend to get excited by stuff no one has ever heard of, or at least, has tucked away in the back of the brain where you can find those old memories of when you wet your pants in kindergarten….

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, now I remember. So, I was doing some research this week, and I realized a couple of things. 1. I had not yet posted anything about the night when Gary Sabourin tied the franchise record with four goals in one game. 2. Sabourin scored those four goals the legendary Phil Esposito to New York trade took place, and 3. Esposito’s first game as a Ranger was in Oakland. So that’s what today’s article is about: the night Gary Sabourin stole the spotlight from Esposito as the entire hockey media descended upon the Bay Area. You have to admit his timing could not have been better, at least from a personal standpoint. If you’d like to read up on the historic night in Seals history, you can head on over to the article right here.

So, that’s about it, folks. Hope you enjoy the NHL All-Star Weekend, if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I kind of take an annual break from hockey at this time, but don’t let me deter you from taking in the skills competition or the 3-on-3 tournament. Just not my thing, that’s all. Hope to see you all back here again next weekend! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a great week, and are not letting the January blahs get you down. The first month of the year really is a drag sometimes, isn’t it? Especially if you live up here in Canada and every day is either cold, or bitterly cold, or snowy, or rainy, or freezing rainy, or sometimes all of the above. Things could be a lot worse though, as you will soon find out.

This week, we’re heading back to game one of the 1971-72 season, and the Golden Seals have just been dealt a severe blow. Marv Edwards, on loan from the Leafs, was expected to join the team and be a steadying influence on rookie Gary Kurt, but because Charlie Finley had supposedly pissed off some people in Toronto, Edwards was on his way back up north. So, Kurt was the best the Seals had at the goaltending position and thus became the de facto number one until Lyle Carter was able to get to Oakland from the International League. The next time you start feeling like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, be thankful you’re not Gary Kurt, playing behind a group that finished dead last a few months earlier, and staring down at real NHL players charging at you full tilt looking to rip a slap shot between your eyes. You can read this week’s article from the Oakland Tribune‘s John Porter right here.

That’s it for this week folks! Hope you have a great weekend and get some hockey under your belts. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It’s great to be back! It’s been an interesting week. I’ve been cutting back on sugar these last two weeks, and I’m starting to see a difference. I’m not even all that grumpy that my blood sugar is now officially more blood than sugar. That’s probably a good thing, I suppose. Sugar, I think, is not absolutely necessary to life, but it certainly adds a little fun, doesn’t it, much like hockey players who offer fans a little more than just goals and assists. Connor McDavid can really rack up the points, but man, can that guy ever do it with flair. Other superstars put up big numbers too, but the flair factor is not quite the same. If there were two guys in the NHL back in the Seals days who genuinely got fans excited, it was the two Bobbys, Orr and Hull, the latter of which is the subject of this week’s new article.

It doesn’t happen every day that I learn something new about the California Seals. I’ve been researching the team since I was about 12, and I’ve read just about everything I could get my hands on if it had anything to do with the Seals. So when I found this article from December 9, 1970 saying that Finley not only made one, but two cash offers for Bobby Hull, I was pretty stunned. Everyone talks about how the Seals would have been different had they been able to draft Guy Lafleur a few months later, but Hull in a Seals uniform is a very intriguing thought indeed. Who knows how many fans he could have drawn to the Coliseum? He might have still bolted when the WHA came into existence two years later, but you never know, maybe he would have stayed in Oakland. Fun to think about, isn’t it? If you want to read about this very little-known part of Seals history, you can find this Oakland Tribune piece right here.

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

Hi everyone! How are you all doing this fine Friday evening, (or maybe Saturday morning, if you’re reading this with the next day’s morning coffee)? Am I glad that it is the weekend! Is there anything better than Friday night? It’s the longest possible time before you have to go back to work on Monday. It feels like the world is your oyster, and it’s difficult to decide just what you’re going to do out of all the things on your list. I know that by Sunday night I’ll be kicking myself for not getting as much done as I wanted, but hey, that’s how every weekend goes, doesn’t it?

I can’t say it was a great week… fighting a cold, playing catch up at work and still not feeling like I got everything done, the Habs lost twice (maybe three times, I can’t remember). I couldn’t even play Nintendo Sports golf without the Switch disconnecting at least seven times in twenty minutes. I hope things turn out better this weekend.

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, the Seals ’68-’69 season. It started off pretty badly too. The team looked listless, and unable to beat anyone, and attendance was lousy, if not worse than the year before. The team’s future looked totally bleak, but out of the darkness came a tiny glint, just a little sunshine, and all of a sudden the Seals were gunning for second place. This week’s article is a wonderfully written piece from the San Rafael Independent Journal‘s November 1, 1968 edition. It describes in a rather humorous way how the Seals were floundering early in their second season, namely how they couldn’t draw flies to the Coliseum. While that situation never really changed over the course of their nine years in Oakland, the team somehow survived those early bumps to enjoy a little bit of success a few months later. You can read this week’s article here.

Anyway, hope you all have a great weekend! If you’re on the East Coast (or sort-of East Coast like me), take it easy on the roads tonight and tomorrow, and then try to hit the sledding hills with the kids and grandkids!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! No, I haven’t forgotten about any of you these last three weeks. Just took some time off for the Christmas holidays, and boy was it necessary! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (or a Happy Hanukkah), and a Happy New Year! I may have mentioned it before, but December is one busy month in the Currier household: two children’s birthdays and the Christmas holidays (in which said children are home full-time!). There’s lots of presents to buy, wrap, open, store, not to mention a whole heaping load of old toys to bring down to Value Village. I also made the huge mistake of booking a few medical and dental appointments during the last month, not to mention the fact that my work all scheduled a four-day training session for me, so yeah… December was tough. Luckily, January has been like taking a toboggan ride down a nice snowy hill. Considering we are getting our first real snowfall of the winter as I write this entry, the previous simile is about as close as any of us actually got to tobogganing.

In the meantime, I’ve taken advantage of the down time to read up on the early years of Canadian power trio Rush, and how to “nudge” someone into making a wise choice (two separate books). I’ve also had time to drink lots and lots of coffee, watch some hockey, play some Nintendo Switch with the lad, take some online classes on critical decision making, and do some research for my next book. I feel I’ve uncovered some very interesting stories (in my opinion… probably no one else’s). I’m hoping to have it all done within the next year and have a publisher secured next year, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this timeline is realistic.

This week, I ran across an interesting article about the Seals almost moving to San Diego. I hadn’t actually talked about that in my book, so I’m bringing it up now. The NHL could have actually rid itself of Charlie Finley, and saved themselves the $6.5 million they would eventually fork over to make Finley’s departure a reality a few months later, but alas, this was not to be, as you will find out. This article, is a “twofer”, so you also get a summary of the Seals-Black Hawks game from the day before. Morris Mott and Rick Kessell were the big stars of the night at a time when the Seals were desperately hoping to turn their season around. You can read both pieces right here.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Some of you may know that I have been working as a French teacher for close to 20 years now, and most of that time has been spent helping Canada’s public servants pass their mandatory second-language tests. These tests are horrible, stressful, and unlike everyone’s high school or college exams, there is no guarantee you are going to pass even if you spend six months studying for it. As my school’s Academic Director, I’m often the person students approach to vent their frustrations. One of my many techniques to show empathy and build a relationship with a student is to try to blame the government for just about everything. Now, I know what you’re saying, “Steve, the government IS to blame for EVERYTHING.” Well, no that’s not exactly true. Except in my case, the government usually IS to blame. Or maybe they’re not, but they are an easy way out of a conversation you might not want to be part of. What I’m trying to say is that it is human nature to want to blame anything and everything for every problem we have. God forbid WE might be the reason for our shortcomings, right?

Hockey is no stranger to the blame game. Everyone and their puck-stopping dog has something to complain about, and we all know who bears the brunt of the blame: referees. Geez, the boys in stripes just don’t have a lot of friends, do they. It’s always their fault. Bad call here, missed penalty there, they seem to never get anything right, except for the most part, they are pretty damn good at what they do. That said, we just can’t help ourselves from pointing the finger at the zebras. Case in point, February 11, 1973. The Atlanta Flames have just beaten the California Golden Seals 3-1, and Fred Glover is mad at referee Ron Wicks. Glover’s Seals have already gone winless in nine (a streak which would eventually reach 14 games!), and so he may have been looking for something to justify his team’s poor performance. Give the guy a break though… his team hadn’t won in three weeks! I will let you decide whether or not Glover was just blowing off some steam, or if he was totally justified.

Unfortunately, I have to close on a sad note today. Former Seal Hartland Monahan passed away last week at the age of 72. He only suited up once for California, back in 1973-74, but he had a successful career elsewhere, notably with Washington, where he had seasons of 46 and 50 points before the end of the decade. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Monahan’s friends, family, and teammates. Stay gold…