Hi everyone! Hope everyone enjoyed the NHL awards last night. I thought it was actually pretty good, and low on the typical cheese factor. Not too many hokey hockey jokes, which was a nice change, and the tribute to the Humboldt Broncos was rather nice. Overall, it was a classy affair with lots of entertainment value, even though my Habs went unrepresented, not that they had done much this season to deserve any cameo appearances in Vegas unless they wanted to play a little Blackjack on their desert golf trip.
With the NHL awards over and done with, that means the official end of the 2017-18 season, which means it’s draft time. And that means lots of trades to go along with the addition of several potential new star players to the league. To commemorate the high-point of the summer trading season, I’ve added an article about one of the Seals’ most famous trades: Carol Vadnais and Don O’Donoghue for Reggie Leach, Bobby Stewart, and Rick Smith. Simply put, it was one of the Seals’ best trades. Leach became a huge star in the mid-70s, and Stewart was a solid, tough defenseman for California and Cleveland for over six years. Smith didn’t stay long in Oakland, but he also enjoyed a pretty good career mostly spent with the Boston Bruins and the MInnesota Fighting Saints of the WHA. Vadnais, of course, went on to play over 1,000 NHL games, and he won a Stanley Cup with Boston in 1972, so the Bruins got exactly what they were hoping for in the deal. I can only hope that Montreal got themselves a pretty good player in Max Domi, but he seems to be yet another small forward, which Montreal has plenty of, and I have a bad feeling when Galchenyuk gets to Arizona, he is going to play at centre, and he is going to kill it. Besides, Domi had only 9 goals last year, and 4 were empty-netters. I’m hoping those were fluke numbers, but to paraphrase Gob Bluth, I believe the Canadiens have made a huge mistake…
And as usual, it’s time for me to shill a little bit…
This week, I’d like to ask you all to head over to Amazon to write a short review of my book, The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams. If you prefer though, another you can do to help out would be to request the book at your local library, and I mean ANY library. The most libraries know about the book, and the more people request it, the more libraries are going to bite.
Time is also running out to cast your votes for the 2018 Seals Hall of Fame, so get to clicking on the right-hand side of the page. The leading vote-getters will be announced in three weeks!
Until next time, stay gold!