Hi everyone, and welcome back! Have you ever had one of those days where you thought to yourself, “Jeez, I must be the unluckiest person in the world. Nothing ever goes right for me!” Well, this week, meet the unluckiest man in hockey history: Michel Belhumeur. On October 17, 1975, Belhumeur was a unbelievable 0-26-3 in his Washington Capitals career. The poor guy faced an average of damn near 40 shots a night, so even one win would have at least made all that effort sort-of worth it, but no, the hockey gods are indeed cruel. Just ask any Toronto Maple Leafs fan about the fickleness of hockey’s supreme beings. But I digress… back to that October night when the Capitals were in Oakland looking to make it two road wins in a row versus the Seals. You see, the last time these two teams had met was March 28, 1975, and if you need a refresher on what happened that night, might I suggest you head on over to the series of articles from 1974-75 I’ve already posted. Coles Notes version: the Seals lost, and the Caps had themselves their first and only road win of the season. The Seals and Caps had both improved quite a bit since then, and their latest contest was a very close tug-of-war. As the third period drew to a close this time, the Caps were up 3-2, and Belhumeur could taste victory, but was his hunger actually satisfied? You will have to read this week’s article to find out.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! As I was looking around for a new Seals article to post, it dawned on me that one thing we don’t often read about is the relationships between players on opposing teams. Actually, we do read about that sometimes these days in the Hockey News, but not so much back in the day. I think coaches and general managers still didn’t like the idea of their players fraternizing with anyone wearing a different uniform. Nowadays, players intermingle all the time on world championship teams and all-star teams, not to mention various NHLPA meetings. Players have come together three times in the last thirty years to vote in favour of not playing at all. But back in the 1970s it didn’t happen too often that we would learn a lot about friendships between players on different teams. So this week we’re going back to January 6, 1972. The Seals have just beaten their state rivals from Los Angeles, and Carol Vadnais has had the game of his life scoring two goals and two assists against his good friend Rogie Vachon. This has come one night after Vachon put the Seals on ice in a 4-1 Kings victory. Vadnais and Vachon had been friends for years going back to their time with the Montreal Canadiens, and you can see in this article from the Oakland Tribune‘s John Porter that Vachon and Vadnais liked needling each other after a Kings-Seals battle. You can read all about the V-Men’s (patent pending!) playful rivalry, and the Seals’ big win right here.

Have a great Labour Day weekend! Enjoy whatever nice weather you can get wherever you are. Until next time, stay gold!

So far, 2023 has been a tough year for the California Golden Seals. Since the team is no longer active, it is only a matter of time before there aren’t any more former players, coaches, and employees left. This year we’ve lost, among others, Dave Gardner, Marv Edwards, Vic Stasiuk, and Danny Belisle, and now unfortunately we have to add the great Bobby Baun to that list.

I wasn’t going to add anything to the site this week since I’m on my summer holiday, but I also felt I couldn’t let Bobby Baun’s passing go by without a mention. After all, he was the NHL Seals’ very first captain, and the first skater chosen in the expansion draft. Despite other quality players such as Billy Harris, Charlie Hodge, Kent Douglas, Gerry Ehman, and Bill Hicke who were all on the opening day roster, it was Bobby Baun who truly was the brand new franchise’s marquee name. He wasn’t particularly flashy or fast. He didn’t score many goals or pick up a lot of assists. What he did do, however, was hit… hard! He was a defensive specialist of the first order, and a highly respected defenseman around the league. Part of that respect was earned in game 6 of the 1964 Stanley Cup Final when Baun broke his leg blocking a Gordie Howe shot. He could have taken the rest of the night off (not to mention the rest of the playoffs off) considering his physical condition, but Baun chose to have his leg frozen and to get back into the game. It’s a good thing he did too, because in overtime, the puck found its way to Baun, who let an awkward shot go from near the blue line, and somehow it bounced and fluttered its way to the net and past Terry Sawchuk for the game-winner. Baun also played in game 7 two days later where the Leafs won 4-0 to clinch the Cup, their third in a row. Baun’s remarkable achievement has become one of the NHL’s most famous moments, and an excellent example of how tough hockey players truly are. So, this week, I’ve added a new Oakland Tribune article from February 2, 1968, the day after Baun scored his first goal as a member of the Seals.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I hope you all had an excellent, not-too-stressful week. I personally find that when one gives it their very best effort, the week goes by much faster and is much more satisfying in the end. It doesn’t mean working so hard that your heart gives out on the spot, but giving an honest day’s effort, doing whatever you can do to make a situation better, and walking away knowing you did alright.

Where am I going with this? Well, this week I found an interesting piece from January 18, 1973. At this point the Seals were playing their best hockey of the season, albeit a bit late to make any impact on the standings, but there was reason to believe the team was finally turning the corner after having suffered dearly at the hands of the free-spending WHA. A new batch of youngsters, such as Stan Weir, Hilliard Graves, Reggie Leach, Joey Johnston, Pete Laframboise, Walt McKechnie, Ivan Boldirev, and Gilles Meloche made fans optimistic that things were going to be better. It didn’t turn out that way in the end, but once in a while, the aforementioned bunch DID look like future Stanley Cup contenders, and on this night, the Seals gave it their all against a very talented Toronto Maple Leafs team. The article from the San Francisco Examiner‘s Nelson Cullenward can be found in the articles section here.

In closing this week, I will be on vacation with the family the next two weeks, so there won’t be any updates until September, but if you still need your fix, I invite you to read some of the past articles I’ve posted here, and to check out some of the inductions in the Hockey Hall of Shame.

I hope you all have a great two weeks, and I’ll see you back again in September! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Don’t believe the hype. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Don’t get your hopes up. Curb your enthusiasm… Damn, I love that show! Larry David is a freakin’ genius! Oh yeah, right… what was the point of all this again? You probably know other expressions that mean roughly the same thing as those mentioned above. It doesn’t really matter which way you look at the overall theme of these expressions, or how you want to express it, the fact of the matter is you really should follow these pieces of advice. Let’s just face it, when things are just too good to be true, when the wind is all of a sudden in your sails, there is probably some higher power, cosmic influence, mystery alien ray gun, something, that will make the whole universe turn right around, stare you straight in the face, and say, “Nuh uh, ain’t gonna happen, dude!”

Where am I going with all this? Well, I’m going back to December 22, 1970, and the California Golden Seals have just smacked the Chicago Black Hawks around, 5-2. It’s Stick Night, and the Seals have played perhaps their best game of the season. It was an absolutely perfect night to get kids excited about hockey and develop the Bay Area fan base. There was just one problem. The next home game was two weeks away meaning that the Seals lost whatever momentum they had gained. Sure enough, attendance dropped by about 60% the next time Seals played at the Coliseum, and it never really recovered the rest of the season as the team collapsed and dropped to last place overall. The lesson here is you should never get too excited about the future until it actually arrives. Or in the case of the California Seals, you should probably never get too excited at all; you’ll just be really disappointed. You can read all about Stick Night right here.

On a sadder night, I also learned recently that former San Francisco Seal Wayne Maxner passed away July 27 at the age of 80. In 127 games with the WHL Seals he scored an even 100 points. During the Seals’ final two minor-league seasons, Maxner was one of the Seals best offensive players. He never played a game for the NHL Seals, moving on to the Hershey Bears of the American League instead, but Maxner did 61 career games with the Boston Bruins in the mid-1960s scoring 17 points. He also coached the Detroit Red Wings for a couple of years in the early 80s, which was unfortunately a very difficult period for the Original Six franchise. R.I.P. Wayne Maxner.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! What a weekend! At 3:30 yesterday afternoon, one hell of a thunderstorm ripped through Ottawa dumping heavy rain and golf-ball sized hail on us all. Luckily, Environment Canada sent out an alert on all our cellphones warning us a full 30 seconds in advance that it would be a good idea to take cover. Always good to know that if I’m actually vulnerable, out in some open field somewhere when a major storm rolls into town, that I will have literally seconds to hide my butt before needing to scoop handfuls of ice out of my underwear.

If that wasn’t weird enough, my son and I witnessed not one but two deadly (or death-adjacent) incidents involving a bird and a cat. As we were playing a game of bowling on the Nintendo Switch, a bird flew right into our window, and after taking about half an hour to regain its senses, the bird walked away. I breathed a sigh of relief, to say the least, because had that bird broken a wing or something, I have absolutely no idea what I would have had to do. Then, two hours later as we were getting ready to go for a swim over at a neighbour’s house, my son took his scooter down the road and noticed that a neighbourhood cat was run over and a crowd was gathered around trying to figure out what to do. I think they took a picture in order to post a message to the owner on Facebook, since we’d all seen the cat for months now, but had no idea who it belonged to. Very weird weekend to say the least.

By the way, I really don’t have a segue to this week’s featured article. I was actually going to just write about the crazy weather we had on Friday, but since I didn’t actually finish the site update until Saturday night, and I had a weird second afternoon in a row, I thought I’d just go all in. Sorry about that, but hey, whaddya gonna do?

This week, I’ve posted an Oakland Tribune article from John Porter in which he writes about the difficult off-season faced by the California Golden Seals. Near the end of the 1973-74 season Garry Young had been appointed the team’s new Director of Hockey Operations, and he was looking to reshape the pathetic roster Charlie Finley and Fred Glover had left him. The Seals didn’t have much talent to begin with, and they would be forced to give some of it up in the upcoming expansion draft that was going to stock the Washington Capitals and Kansas City Scouts. Young definitely had some hard decisions ahead of him, but when you are faced with these types of situations, sometimes good things happen. In Young’s case, his team showed a marked improvement over the following two years, although he wouldn’t be in Oakland long enough to celebrate his success moving on to St. Louis instead. You can read John Porter’s article right here.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It really is no secret that professional athletes are a cocky bunch. For generations now, professional athletes have had trouble keeping feet out of mouths. Once upon a time, comments were published in newspapers, and that was pretty much it, but as time went on snarky comments became commonplace. If not for idiotic comments, Twitter probably would have died a long time ago. Of course, back in the late 1960s, newspapers were where players heard about what their opponents said about them. Everyone has heard stories of coaches placing nasty articles in dressing rooms hoping to anger and inspire the troops. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

In the November 13, 1968 Long Beach Press-Telegram, L.A. Kings’ goaltender Gerry Desjardins was none too impressed with the play of the Seals, and he wasn’t shy about sharing his thoughts on the subject, labelling his opponents “mediocre” among other insults. Sometimes these kinds of comments light a fire under a team, but in this case, the Seals didn’t beat L.A. until late March. The Seals-Kings rivalry never quite reached the same fever pitch of Boston vs Montreal or Detroit vs Colorado, but in 1968-69, the clubs engaged in a sometimes vicious battle for California hockey supremacy, culminating in a closely-fought 7-game playoff series. So, in the end Desjardins got away with his comments, although he would eventually end up in Oakland three years later after the Seals had sunk to the bottom of the West Division. Hmm… maybe he didn’t get away with it… Then again, he did end up in Chicago a few weeks later without having played even one game for Oakland, so I guess he did get away with it. Good for him for turning away the fickle finger of fate, and avoiding any repercussions for flapping his gums. After all, defying the odds is never an easy task. You can read all about when Desjardins threw down the gauntlet right here.

Have a great weekend, everybody! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone!

July 15, 1976. Forty-seven years ago, newspapers across North America reported that the California Golden Seals were going to move to Cleveland. It was a day Seals fans had expected for many years, yet it came rather suddenly. After all, 1975-76 had been arguably the Seals’ best season, although many would argue that in 1969, when they finished second in the West Division and took the L.A. Kings to seven games, this was in fact their best season. The difference between those two seasons, however, was that the 1969 Seals were a team that was successful because its veterans all had career years. Guys like Ted Hampson, Bill Hicke, Earl Ingarfield, and others were growing long in the tooth, but were very productive. In 1976, however, the team was young, and the sky seemed the limit. Most of the team’s core was no more than 25-26 years old. This was quite simply the team of the future, the team that was going to finally take the Seals to the promised land. Fans came out in record numbers (a record in Oakland, that is…). The Seals finally had a responsible owner who had grand plans for the brand new arena that was going to knock the hockey world’s socks off. And just like that, it all went up in a puff of smoke. I’ve posted a new article about the devastating announcement, which you can read in the articles section here.

Normally, this is the time when I announce new inductees to the Seals Hall of Fame, but this year I decided not to do so. You may have noticed that I didn’t open up a vote this time around. I felt that the Hall of Fame had reached the point where if we continued to add more members it would begin to lose its lustre. After all, the Seals and Barons, if you count both NHL and WHL played for just 17 years, and so there is a finite number of suitable candidates for the Hall. The Hall is, of course, reserved for the franchise’s very best: players and other members of the team who were key figures in the franchise’s history. Many of the HOF candidates who are left have been up for election for many years and have fallen short every time. If baseball can officially eliminate a HOF candidate who doesn’t get the minimum number of votes, I feel the Seals Hall should do the same. Not everyone can be a member of the Hall of Fame, unfortunately, and while it may be unfair that guys like Curtis Joseph, Rod Brind’Amour, Keith Tkachuk, Dave Taylor, Bernie Nicholls, Peter Bondra, Pavel Datsyuk, and others are not in the Hockey Hall of Fame, the line between great and very good has to be drawn somewhere. I don’t want to rule out future inductions to the HOF, but for now the decision stands.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, and that you will all be back for another update next week! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! How’s it going, folks? Well, once again the Stanley Cup has been awarded, and once again a couple of dozen players are going to have the greatest summer of their lives. Ah, to be young, and a Stanley Cup champion… if only we could all experience that moment just once, but alas, it is not meant to be. After all, if we could all be winners all the time, it wouldn’t be very special. That said, we all experience special moments in our lives, and while they may not be on the same level as winning a Stanley Cup, holding your newborn baby in your arms, or flying a fighter jet, it’s important to savour those moments, because you never know if you will get to experience them again. Whoa! There I go getting all philosophical. I should probably segue to this week’s new Seals article.

This time, we’re going back to November 1973, just shortly after Garry Young’s dismissal as coach and general manager. Fred Glover is now behind the bench, but things ain’t going so well, but what else is new in Oakland. The Seals are in Buffalo, after having lost seven straight away from home. In fact, the Seals haven’t won a road game all season long. On this night, however, Gilles Meloche and his defense mates play a perfect game, and take a 2-0 decision. Hopefully, the team took the opportunity to savour the victory, because it would be the last one they would pick up away from home until the final month of the season. You can read all about the Seals’ big win right here.

The NHL draft is over, and the best free agents have all been signed, so that means you’ve got the rest of the summer to enjoy other endeavours. Hopefully, you can take advantage of the warm summer weather, and enjoy a cold one on the porch. Like the Seals did in the late evening of November 19, 1973, savour the small moments.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! This week, I want to write about those times where we’ve felt something was not quite right. Not necessarily with ourselves. Not necessarily with everyone around us either. In those moments, it just feels like you don’t belong. I had that bizarre feeling last week when I attended a local book fair. I had had my hopes up that could sell a few copies, and maybe connect with a few people who would become subscribers to this site, but alas, it was not meant to be. I had a sinking feeling when I started seeing the other authors set up their goods at their respective tables. I had a look around the room, and all I could see was poetry, novels, and plenty of other things that had absolutely nothing to do with sports or history. And that’s when I knew I was in the wrong place. And that there were still another four hours and fifty-five minutes to this five-hour fair. I learned a valuable lesson last weekend, which is to know your audience, and to follow it. People who are looking to buy poems and mystery novels are not interested in hockey, and even less interested in parting with their money to support your hockey-writing career. The day wasn’t a complete bust, however, as one out-of-town publisher was offloading many of his poetry books for free, so I took a couple in the hopes it could rekindle my old university interest in this art. And someone put the event’s free food on the table right next to mine, so I had my fair share of chocolate brownies that afternoon. All in all, I can’t complain.

Mike Laughton might have felt out of place from time to time too. After all, before graduating to the NHL he had once been a figure skater, and even wore figure skates during hockey games. We all know, of course, that the Seals also felt out of place just about every time they stepped onto the ice during the Charlie Finley years. Laughton, the actual figure skater, was not around when the Seals introduced their white skates, which fans and media members often said made them look like figure skaters. This week’s new article comes from December 1967, after Laughton had only played about 15 games with the Seals, but already he was making an impact with his new club. This Spence Conley piece is all about Laughton’s other athletic skill and how he chose hockey over a promising figure-skating career.

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