Pucks, Pants, and Painted Skates

Hi everyone!

Have we got some treats for you today! The theme today is the three P’s of hockey: pucks, pants, and… uh… how about painted skates for the hat-trick. It’s been a long time, but we have inducted a brand new hockey catastrophe into the Hockey Hall of Shame, a fashion design so ill-conceived it makes me wonder how it took me so long to write something about it. I’m talking about the not-so-legendary Cooperall pants.  In the Overexposed wing of the HHOS, we have one of the strangest excuses for a card, Pro-Set’s puck from their inaugural 1990-91 set.

For you Seals fans, we have a brand new article that was featured in the January 14, 1972 Oakland Tribune.  The Seals were gearing up to face the Vancouver Canucks at the Coliseum that very night, but lo and behold this game meant a little more than keeping the Seals’ playoff hopes alive.  Oh, this was the night, Charlie Finley’s hockey dreams came true and got to see his NHL team wear the beautiful white skates he had envisioned ever since he joined the league.  Had the Seals lost the game, maybe Finley would have soured on the fancy footwear, but perhaps because the Seals looked so good in their 5-3 win, he decided to keep them around a little longer.  It’s no probably no coincidence that the team began to slide in the standings within about a month, probably because the skates were getting heavier and heavier from constant paint jobs to cover scuff marks.  It has to make you wonder that if Finley had not forced his players to wear the white skates, could the Seals have made the playoffs that year.  Would lighter footwear have made the difference?  Who knows.

Don’t forget about our Seals Hall of Fame vote, which can be found on the right-hand side of the screen.  The new inductees will be announced in July, to coincide with the date the Seals packed their bags for Cleveland.  If you’d like to subscribe to this page and receive e-mail updates from the site, you can sign up by typing in your e-mail address, also on the right-hand side of the screen, near the top.

Until next time, stay gold!

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