What’s with all this “stay gold” stuff you close every update with?

Ever read The Outsiders? Johnny says “stay gold” to Ponyboy, referring to the Robert Frost poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” which they had read earlier in the book. I don’t really remember what “stay gold” actually means, but since this is a site about the California Golden Seals, the line makes sense. Besides, it’s a cheesy closer, which is perfect for a sometimes cheesy site like this.

What caused the Seals’ demise?

THAT is a question that requires a VERY LONG answer, but I’ll spare you the details and give you the abridged version. The team should have remained in San Francisco instead of moving to Oakland, because the majority of fans were in San Francisco and San Jose. Selling the team to Finley instead of Jerry Seltzer was a bigger mistake. Seltzer actually was interested in making the team a success, and he had a plan. Finley didn’t. Another reason for the Seals’ demise was that Finley refused to spend money to keep his best players from going to the WHA in 1972. Of course, everyone took off, and the Seals’ roster was decimated resulting in a 48-point season in 1972-73 and a 36-point season the next year. Then, when the Seals tried to have a new arena built in San Francisco, the city actually turned them down, so they had to move. Relocating the Seals to Cleveland was a mistake because the rink was some thirty miles out of town, and the two winters they had there were brutal, so no one came to the games.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about the Golden Seals franchise?

That’s hard to say… there are a lot of misconceptions, I think, but one of the biggest was that the team had no stars. Definitely not true… Dennis Maruk, Reggie Leach, Walt McKechnie, Carol Vadnais, Gilles Meloche… all pretty great players who had long NHL careers.

In your opinion, what are the most significant/interesting events in Seals history?

The most significant event in Seals history, in my opinion, is a tie between Gilles Meloche’s debut when the Seals beat Boston 2-0 in Boston. It was the first time the Bruins had been shutout in over a year! Then there was the 4-3 win in Montreal in March 1974. In both cases, players and fans still remember those two events fondly. The most interesting event has to be the streaking incident at the end of the 1973-74 season. Ah yes, the famous Seals streaker. A 24-year-old woman was asked by the Seals to skate out onto the Coliseum ice between periods wearing nothing but a pair of black skates (seriously, the team probably had the old white skates, at this point no longer being used by the players, sitting in an old storage locker, and yet they gave her BLACK skates!) I heard from a Seals fan that she was a former girlfriend of Bobby Sheehan. I don’t think the players knew anything about it, and most of them saw nothing because they were in the dressing room, as far as I know. I’m not sure if she was asked by someone in the front office, and then they gave her tickets to the game, or if she was picked out from the crowd and asked to streak. I’m guessing it was the former. From what I heard, someone in the Seals’ front office gave her some booze to give her some extra courage, crawled out from behind the players’ bench, and then skated onto the ice. Most people only got a glimpse of her before they realized what was going on. Krazy George, the Seals’ one-man cheerleading squad, was supposed to take a picture of her when she skated off the ice, but he fumbled the camera and didn’t get the shot. There is some very brief film footage of the streaker in Mark Greczmiel’s documentary on the Seals.

What was the deal with Charlie Finley and the live seals promotion?

Finley had this crazy idea that having a live seal at centre ice would be a great promotion, but all the thing did was lay on the ice, so the team never did it again. Finley did lots of promotions involving animals in baseball too, including his mule “Charlie O.” He also pondered giving his players kangaroo skin skates, but that wasn’t a strong enough material so they stuck with traditional skates (various colours mind you, but traditional skates nonetheless).

What possessed you to want to write a book about, of all things, the California Golden Seals?

For one thing, when I was a kid, no one had ever written a book about the Seals, so when I started collecting cards from the 1970s, and I noticed the Seals’ cool green-and-gold uniforms, I thought it would be a good idea to write something about them. My interest in the Seals started around 1988 when my Dad bought me an issue of Hockey Illustrated from the corner store. It had Wayne Gretzky on the cover, which was not surprising, since he was still the best player in the world. I had just started watching hockey that season, when the Patrick Roy-led Montreal Canadiens finished second overall behind the Calgary Flames. I guess that’s why I asked my Dad for the magazine. Inside, there was an article on the 1967-68 season, which of course, was the year of the great expansion, so the article had photos of all the new teams, including the Seals and their classic leaping seal logo. George Swarbrick was the featured player. I started finding small references to the Seals here and there, including my Esso sticker book. In it, there was a line that went something like “the old Seals just disappeared entirely” and I got curious about what happened to the Seals. My 1987 NHL sticker book also had references to the Seals in the stat lines for Gilles Meloche, Dennis Maruk, and Charlie Simmer, so that peaked my curiosity as well. Then I just got down to researching. I asked the NHL for information about the Seals, and they sent me a photocopy of the team’s 1975-76 media guide, so that really got the ball rolling.

What’s the story behind the title of the book?

Originally, I wanted to call the book, The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates and Red Ink, then I wanted to go with The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Scuffles, and a Streaker, but my publisher chose The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams. The “White Skates” is because the Seals once wore those things for about two years, not to mention green and gold skates for another year. The “Red Ink” is because the team lost money pretty much from day one of its NHL life, and the rest of the title, that’s because the Seals truly are one of the weirdest teams in hockey history. From the uniforms to their owners, to their lopsided losses, and one-sided trades, the Seals were definitely unique.

This book is awesome! What can I do to help spread the word?

You can do lots of things (and thanks for the compliment, by the way). You can head on over to Amazon to buy lots and lots of copies. If that’s a little beyond your means, I completely understand. Might I suggest leaving some feedback on Amazon or on any other site that sells or mentions the book? Ask your local library if they carry it, and if they don’t, tilt your head slightly to the right, look at them quizzically and say, “Really?”, and then tell them that they absolutely NEED to add lots and lots of copies of it to their collection. Fun fact: Did you know I actually get paid when people borrow my book from the library? How cool is that!

Is the book available in paperback or as an eBook?

Yes, the book is available as an eBook, and also in paperback format, both of which you can purchase on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca as well as the University of Nebraska Press website.

When will the next book be released, and what is it about?

The next book, if all goes according to plan, will be about the 1974 expansion draft, which allowed the Kansas City Scouts and Washington Capitals to stock the rosters of two of the worst teams of all-time. Of course, in the long run, things have worked out pretty well for Washington, and after some initial hiccups in Kansas City, the Scouts found their way to Denver, and then New Jersey, where they went on to win three Stanley Cups. The book won’t be nearly that positive since it will cover the first two seasons of the Capitals and Scouts (they went 46-236-38, and seven of those wins were against each other!).  The book is really an expansion (see what I did there?) of the article I wrote a few years ago about the two teams’ four-game exhibition series in Japan for something called the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup. I loved interviewing the players and hearing their stories about that little-known footnote in hockey history, so I thought covering the expansion draft and the Scouts’ and Caps’ first two seasons would make an interesting tale worth writing about. The whereabouts of the Cup always intrigued me, especially since not one player remembered bringing it back home nor did they recall every seeing it again, but after some careful research, I have some answers, but you’ll just have to wait for the book to find out.