Hi everyone! The answer is that they are all about skinning things, but we’ll get back to that in a minute… How’s everyone doing this fine day? It’s about 25 below here in Ottawa, and it looks like this is going to be the norm for the next few days, which is a real bummer if you just want to go outside and you know, enjoy winter. Or take a ride in the car to avoid losing digits in the freezing wind. That’s actually become a problem around here as I was told today that my car has likely suffered so much from the cold this last week that it is probably frozen to the point it won’t start anymore. It’s just a theory, really, from the CAA – that’s Triple-A to my American friends out there – guy who came to give my car a boost, and when that failed could not tow it to the Honda dealership to look into the real issue because no battery means no turning off the parking brake. Active parking brakes mean no tow. So now a wrecker has to come by to haul my Honda Civic over to the dealership, where I’m either going to be faced with a 30-second fix (fingers crossed) or a several-day fix necessitating massive repairs and hundreds of dollars. Should be a fun weekend!

I kind of feel like the Oakland Seals just after their game against the Boston Bruins November 10, 1969: beaten down, tired, wondering when this day will be over, and as Spence Conley wrote in this week’s article, skinned. In this horrendous negative-star contest, the Bruins directed 63 shots at the Seals’ beleaguered netminding tandem of Gary Smith and Charlie Hodge. The contest was really just a preview of the hell the Bruins were going to unleash onto the rest of the NHL for the next few seasons. In fact, the Seals got to relive this night in March the following season when those same Bruins launched another 63 shots and scored a 7-0 victory. Yup, Bruins-Seals match-ups were indeed hard to watch if you were a Seals booster.

Ok, maybe I need to lighten the mood a bit, so here’s a brand new Overexposed induction for you, and it comes courtesy of the 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee set, an otherwise nice-looking ensemble of hockey photos in my opinion. Today though… ah, not so much. This week’s cardboard atrocity features Atlanta/Calgary Flames great Guy Chouinard shortly after his trade to St. Louis. You know what that means, folks… airbrushin’ a-plenty! That and a helmet that would not only tear every hair off your head, but likely your skin cap as well. You can check out Guy’s worst all-time card right here.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! The weekend is finally here, and I’m feeling great. Sure, it’s literally -20 degrees Celcius outside and I’ll probably lose my pinky toe to frostbite taking the garbage out to the garage tonight, but hey it’s the last day of our son having to endure that dreadful online-learning crap, and we’ll finally have a chance to spend some time sledding or skating outside (assuming, of course, that the temperature drops just a tad), and we can look forward to our lives sort-of getting back to normal, so we can start looking on the bright side.

Another thing that I’ve really been thankful for of late has been the massive updates that were made to Hockey-reference.com. I’ve recently discovered that the site has now posted game logs for every player on the site. So, if I want to know how many consecutive games Joey Johnston scored a point in his rookie season, I have to look no further than Hockey-reference.com. I’m not being paid to promote the site, by the way; I’m just a stats geek who has waited his entire life to have the NHL’s entire statistical history laid out in front of him. I would have killed to have this site at my disposal when I was in the early stages of my own research on the Seals, and I can only imagine what kind of books and research we are going to be treated to in the future now that all of these stats are made available for free!

This week’s article comes from April 14, 1969, which is the day after the L.A. Kings defeated the Seals in Game 7 of the West Division semi-finals. The Seals had given it their all in the six previous games, but by the final contest, they were exhausted, and the Kings took advantage. I was actually a little surprised that I hadn’t uploaded any articles about this game onto the site, considering it technically represents the farthest the Seals ever advanced in the playoffs, so I’m righting a wrong today. Hope you enjoy it.

That’s about it for this week. Hope you all have a great weekend, and I hope you can all enjoy the weather a little wherever you are. Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone and Happy New Year! May 2022 be a mere trash can fire in comparison to the raging dumpster fire that was 2021 and the towering inferno of steel, asbestos and chemical fumes that was 2020. I pray we are finally going to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and if you are a Montreal Canadiens fan like me, I pray we are finally going to see a light in the shape of a first-overall scoring sensation that is going to lead the club out of the ashes. Twenty-twenty-two has gotten off to a rather rocky start so far thanks to Omicron. The NHL has looked absolutely directionless of late, games are getting postponed left, right and centre I have absolutely no idea how they are all going to be made up. The kids here in Ontario have returned to online learning until January 14 (ha ha ha ha, I know, I know… it’s going to be a LOT longer than that if you have any recollection of the Doug Ford government’s past decisions involving schools). Yes, 2022 is not exactly giving me the warm and fuzzies so far as I write this entry exactly 9 days into the new year.

I can say, however, that on the personal side things could not be much better. My son and I have discovered a love for outdoor skating, which I honestly thought he would want to have nothing to do with, but lo and behold, the minute he strapped on the skates he became Mr. Persistent and absolutely refused to use any kind of device to hold him up, and he refused to let me help him skate around the ice. By the end of that first hour, he was able to run-skate everywhere. By the second session, he was gliding around just a bit, and by the third session, he was practically full-on skating. As a Dad, and as my first child to learn to skate, I was very proud. Where I was less proud was how I performed on the ice. You see, I’m really more of a hockey writer than a hockey player. Remember that Kevin MacKay 1991-92 7th Inning Sketch card (check it out right here) where he looks to be doing a dead-on impression of Bambi walking on ice for the first time? Well, the hockey gods punished me yesterday for making fun of Kevin by having me endure the exact same thing. Why I thought I’d be able to just glide out there and do a couple of laps without embarrassing myself, I have no idea. I hadn’t skated in 15 years easy and it’s not like I was Connor McDavid out there way back then either. In fact, I was, and am, more MacKay than McDavid. I mean, I still don’t even know how to properly stop on my skates, which I had also forgotten over the years. After falling flat on my ass (and hip, and knee) more times than I can count, I finally managed to stay on my feet enough to regain some of my pride, and skate a few half-decent looking laps around the rink, but next time I will at least bring a stick and puck to provide me with something to lean on, and make it look like I know what I’m doing.

Anyway, enough about me.

This week, I received an email from Chuck Nan, who did some personal research and managed to fill in some of the gaps in my San Francisco Seals and California Golden Seals game-by-game summaries, not to mention give me some insight into the Seals’ participation in the Western Hockey League all-star games. I have posted updated versions of the two game-by-game summaries, which now feature a complete roundup of all exhibition games played by the minor-league and major-league Seals, and I have added to the all-star and awards sections of the Definitive Franchise Record Book. Thanks Chuck for all your contributions to the site! You can find the three updated pdf files over in the Stats section.

If you are looking for some new reading material, might I suggest this nice piece about former Seals general manager Garry Young. It was written for the Original Hockey Hall of Fame’s which is located in Kingston, Ontario, where I went to university for four years. The article, which you can find here at the OHHOF’s website, talks about the Boston Bruins’ Kingston connection, and how Garry Young was instrumental in building the Bruins into Stanley Cup champions.

UPDATE: McFarland Press has pushed back the publication date of my new book When the NHL Invaded Japan: The Washington Capitals, the Kansas City Scouts, and the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup, 1975-76 to May 6, 2022, so you can still pre-order the book on Amazon.com or on the McFarland website, but you’ll be celebrating Valentines’ Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter before you receive it in the mail. That said, it IS coming, so I can’t complain too much, and it will hopefully provide some of you with some summer hockey reading material.

That’s about it for this week. If your team’s games have been postponed due to Covid, enjoy the time away from the NHL, and, if you are lucky enough to be able to do so, take advantage of the winter weather to get some of your own hockey games organized, or get the kids their own sticks and pucks so they can do what we hockey fans have always done in January, and that is skate, skate, skate, and shoot, shoot, shoot. And if you’re like me, and you haven’t skated in over a decade, take my advice and wear some extra padding, and maybe a helmet.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Since most of our favourite NHL teams are currently sitting out this weekend (and let’s face it, probably the next several weeks as well… I smell another hastily organized bubble tournament!), we all probably need a much-needed hockey fix, so here we are, and I’m here to deliver.

This week, I’ve added a new article article from January 3, 1976, the day after the Seals crushed the second-year Washington Capitals 8-5 and Wayne Merrick set a new team record with six points. The win was extremely significant as it not only ended the Seals’ five-game losing streak, but it also got started them on the best nine-game stretch in franchise history: 7 wins, 1 loss, and 1 tie. The hot streak actually got people thinking the Seals had a chance at the playoffs, but alas, it was not meant to be for the sixth year in a row.

I’ll be honest with you though that I had a selfish reason for posting this week’s article. As you know, my next book When the NHL Invaded Japan: The Washington Capitals, the Kansas City Scouts, and the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup, 1975-76, is about to be released early in the new year, so if you have any interest in knowing what made the Capitals or Scouts tick their first two NHL seasons, you’ll want to check it out. It is available for pre-order on Amazon as well as on the McFarland Press website.

The other reason I’ve posted the article is that I will be taking a break from the website during these Christmas holidays, and I will be back the week of January 2, the date of the aforementioned Seals’ triumph over Washington. Hope everyone has a Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year.

Until 2022, stay gold!

Hi everyone! A quick little back story on this week’s new article, which you can find right here by the way. This week, I received an e-mail from site subscriber Sante Debacco, who informed me about the significance Seals-Kings contest from December 25, 1971. I remembered quite clearly that the Seals were involved in the NHL’s last-ever Christmas game, so I was surprised to notice that I had never posted an article about said contest. So, this week, I’ve added a great John Porter article about that game, a 3-1 victory for the Seals, who, as you may remember, were on a bit of a roll that season after acquiring Gilles Meloche from Chicago. The Seals were looking like serious playoff contenders at this point, and they wouldn’t relinquish their hold on the West Division’s last post-season ticket until the latter days of March. On Christmas night, the lowly Kings gave the Seals all they could handle, but the Golden Ones hung on for the win thanks to some stellar goaltending from Meloche, playing in his ninth straight game. Fred Glover, by then the Kings’ coach, was confronting his former team, who had fired him three games into the season, for the first time. Little did Glover know that within less than a year, he would be back behind the Oakland bench. Thanks Sante for bringing the game up and for pointing out its significance!

That’s about it for this week, so I hope you all have a great weekend and get that Christmas shopping finished (or started?). Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! December has been a lot of fun so far. My daughter Laura turned two yesterday, so the wife and I spent the night before wrapping presents and decorating the house a little bit. My daughter was actually fighting a cold on her birthday so she stayed home, and my wife picked up our son Emmett at school a bit early so we could open some presents and have a few birthday snacks before supper. We all had a great time, and even sick little Laura managed to enjoy her birthday.

Then today we went out to buy this year’s Christmas tree, which the wife and I are going to set up tonight and decorate tomorrow with the kids, so it should be another fun day. Emmett and I did a little Christmas shopping so he could pick up a few small presents for his aunts, uncles and grandparents, and even though he was tired, he pushed ahead and we managed to find a few nice trinkets and candy for everyone. We even had a nice little snowfall of about 4 cm this morning, so it really is starting to feel like the holidays again.

As you’ve probably realized by now, I really have absolutely no segue into this week’s new additions to the site. I’ve added a new article from the December 10, 1970 Vancouver Sun. The game detailed in this article isn’t anything special per se other than the fact the Seals won and that Earl Ingarfield scored 4 points for the victors. I chose to add this article to the site archives for the simple reason that Vancouver coach Hal Laycoe’s description of what it was like playing against the Seals during the 1970-71 season is hilarious. I won’t spoil it for you here (other than a little teaser in this week’s headline), so I urge you to read this great piece about one of the Seals’ rare wins that year.

For all of you stats nerds and San Francisco Seals fans, you may want to download the updated version of the team’s game-by-game summary which now includes about 99% of the team’s game-by-game attendance figures. A huge thanks to Chuck Nan who was able to find most of the WHL Seals’ home attendance marks, as well as a few road figures as well, including quite a few I was having trouble finding!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! The NHL season is heating up! Some teams are already out of the playoff picture (cough, cough… Montreal), some contenders are hitting the skids and holding their hands over the panic button, and the media is speculating about everything, from that “lower body” injury with which Joe Fourth-liner missed last night’s game to why Auston Matthews decided to change deodorants. Yes, it’s the quarter-season mark, and things are starting to get crazy. It isn’t just this season either. Even way back in the California Golden Seals days, crazy rumours would spring up here and there. For instance, right around this time back in 1974, Seals broadcaster Joe Starkey had been told that coach Marshall Johnston had been fired and replaced by Bill McCreary (which actually did happen a few months later), and that captain Joey Johnston was on his way to New York. It turns out it was all a hoax, which I invite you to read about in my book. Starkey was kind enough to share this embarrassing story with me for the book, and to this day, he still has no idea how that rumour managed to make its way into the broadcast, considering only a select few could actually call in to report any hockey news during a game in progress. The “hoax” game itself was a letdown for the Seals – a 3-1 loss to Minnesota – even though the Golden Ones had played quite well. This week’s article, from the Oakland Tribune‘s John Porter is all about that fateful night, and you can find it right here.

That’s about it for this week. I’m about to dive into my “Best of the World Hockey Association Hall of Fame” DVD which I received today from Amazon. It’s about 5 hours long, so considering my busy schedule I might have it done in three or four weeks, or more.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! The day is getting closer! In exactly two months and one day (January 20, 2022), my new book, When the NHL Invaded Japan: the Washington Capitals, the Kansas City Scouts, and the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup, 1975-76, will be released. That means I should probably start shilling and promoting my baby, so here goes. Click on this link to find a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book, not to mention a few links to places where you can pre-order it. If you liked my first book, I think you will find this new tome an interesting read as well. The book covers the Scouts and Capitals’ first two years in the NHL, but in actuality, the book is about the mysterious Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup. To fully understand how the little-known Japanese mini-series came to be, one must start at the very beginning of these two franchises, even going a little further back to the NHL’s earliest forays into expansion. The NHL picked a very bad time to expand into Washington and Kansas City. The World Hockey Association had already pillaged and plundered the New York Islanders in 1972, and the rebel league continued to wreak havoc on the NHL when the Scouts and Capitals prepared for the 1974 expansion draft. The slim pickings at their disposal sent the NHL newbies on a two-year roller-coaster ride that culminated in the four-game set of games in Tokyo and Sapporo.

As I was thinking of what I could add to the site this week, I realized I had forgotten two very important statistics sections pertaining to the San Francisco Seals. First, there is the WHL Seals’ all-time scoring and goaltending stats, and then there is the club’s year-by-year scoring and goaltending stats. Can’t believe I never got around to posting them until now, especially since they were all ready to go just sitting there in a computer folder since something like 2019. Whoops!

So that’s the update for this week. Have a great weekend, and get some hockey under your belts! Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It has been a tough couple of weeks in the California Seals family as three of its members sadly passed away. Former San Francisco Seals player-coach Charlie Burns died on November 5 at the age of 85. Tony Featherstone, the Seals’ first round draft pick in 1969 passed October 30 at the age of 72. Defenseman Ron Serafini, who played two games for the Seals in 1973-74, also passed away October 30 one day before his 68th birthday. We wish the families and friends of Mr. Burns, Mr. Featherstone, and Mr. Serafini our sincerest condolences.

Charlie Burns was one of the most prominent players in Seals history, and one of the few players to cross over from the WHL club to the NHL club. Burns totalled 237 points, the fourth-highest total in team history, in 230 career WHL games with the Seals. His 92 goals place him 5th overall in that category. He also has the distinction of scoring the very last regular-season goal in WHL Seals history. For a time, Burns both played and coached the Seals, compiling a 50-44-5 record and franchise-best .530 win percentage. Burns was a heart-and-soul player who always gave it his all, and he fought his way back to the NHL after having been sent down to San Francisco while he was a member of the parent Boston Bruins. Burns suffered a severe head injury during his junior career, so he was forced to wear a distinct leather helmet during his professional career, which stretched out from 1958 to 1973. He began his NHL career in Detroit, but after just one season, he was sent to Boston where he would perform admirably as a penalty-killer for the next four years. He had a deft scoring touch, however, notching 48 career goals with Boston. He was sent down to San Francisco for four years, and he became one of the Seals’ most valuable players. In fact, the Seals Booster Club named him the team’s MVP in both 1964 and 1965. He also led the team in scoring in 1963-64 with 69 points in 68 games, and he played a valuable role in the Seals’ second straight championship season. After four seasons in the WHL, Burns returned to the NHL as a member of the California Seals, and he did not look out of place finishing the year with nine goals and a team-leading 26 assists. His 35 points placed him third on the expansion team’s scoring list. The Pittsburgh Penguins claimed him in the intra-league draft during the off-season, and he continued to play a prominent role with his new club (second in team scoring with 51 points) before moving on to Minnesota for the last four years of his career.

Tony Featherstone’s stay in Oakland was not quite as long as Burns, but at times he showed some flashes of skill, notably when he finished the 1970-71 season on a five-game point streak. They were the last games he would play for the Seals before being traded to Montreal for goaltending prospect Ray Martyniuk. Featherstone had been selected by Oakland, 7th overall in the 1969 amateur draft, and he would see action nine times with the 1969-70 Seals. Featherstone was expected to play a bigger role with the club the following season, but he struggled for the most part until a season-ending stretch in which he scored seven points in nine games. The Seals were desperate for goaltending, however, as the 1971-72 season approached. Gary Smith had been dealt to Chicago for Gerry Desjardins, but Desjardins arrived in Oakland with an injured arm, and so the deal was left in limbo for a few weeks, meaning the Seals were bereft of any veteran goaltenders. Featherstone never caught on with Montreal (although he did score 103 points one year with the Habs’ farm team in Nova Scotia), and Martyniuk never reached the NHL at all, but the Minnesota North Stars gave him another opportunity in 1973-74 (21 points in 54 games). Featherstone then signed with the Toronto Toros of the WHA and enjoyed a successful 63-point season his first year. He retired from professional hockey in 1976.

Defenseman Ron Serafini was drafted 50th overall by California in the 1973 amateur draft, but only suited up twice for the Seals before eventually finding his way to the World Hockey Association. He played 16 games for Cincinnati, posting two assists before returning to the minors. He played one last season in Austria in 1977-78 before hanging up his blades.

This week I have posted an article from February 12, 1968, the date of Burns’ best (NHL) Seals game, a two-goal performance in a 4-3 come-from-behind victory for the Seals. I’ve also posted an article from April 1, 1971 about the Seals’ impressive 4-1 win over Minnesota. This game featured Tony Featherstone’s last goal as a member of the Seals. He was really heating up as the season was coming to a close, scoring four goals and three assists in his last nine games of the season. During that stretch, he had scored goals in three consecutive games, the last of which was the one presented in this week’s second article.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Uh… so glad this week is finally over. I had no idea last week how crappy this week was going to be. I’ve been slogging through a cold since last weekend, and I’m finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time in days, I’m not stuffed up, drippy, raspy voiced, or nauseous. I suppose my condition this week was a little like the Cleveland Barons circa May-June 1977. Ok, maybe not THAT much alike. After all, at that time the Barons had practically been resurrected like a hockey-playing Lazarus, and I had a cold, but it’s the only way I can segue into this week’s new article, which pertains to George Gund’s purchase of the franchise, and the hope that things were going to get better in Cleveland. Hopefully, my recovery from this cold does NOT follow the same model as the Cleveland Barons, who quickly became sick again and then died about a year later. Think happy thoughts, Steve… Anyway, you can find this week’s new article right here.

As an added bonus this week, a brand new induction into the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame. I had a bit of extra time this week, and I was able to track down a strange card from the 1992-93 Classic Four Sport set. Classic has provided this site with a non-stop pipeline of crappy cardboard for several years now, and this week’s is indeed another classic Classic. Poor Dave Tretowicz… I can only hope he has overcome his public narcolepsy and has regained a sense of normalcy in the 21st century. To find out what the hell I’m talking about, I urge you to check out this week’s induction.

Until next time, stay gold!