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!