Hi everyone! We’ve got a great new piece of Seals/Barons history to present to you this week. Actually, it’s a great new conversation with Gary Webster, author of the forthcoming book The NHL’s Mistake by the Lake: A History of the Cleveland Barons and Tim Hanlon of the sports history podcast Good Seats Still Available. Some of you may already be familiar with GSSA as over the years Tim has invited several people to chat about the Golden Seals, notably yours truly as well as legendary cheerleader Krazy George Henderson and Seals documentarian Mark Greczmiel. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of Gary Webster’s book, and I look forward to diving in this fall. If you haven’t done so, head on over to Amazon.com or to the McFarland Press website to pre-order it.

The conversation between Hanlon and Webster is eye-opening and informative. I learned a lot about what went on behind the scenes at Richfield Coliseum, but also what led to the Seals moving to Cleveland in the first place. Webster also spends quite a bit of time talking about some of Cleveland’s previous hockey failures. He doesn’t go much into detail about what the Barons did on the ice, but don’t let that deter you from downloading the cast as it is a fascinating discussion lasting almost two full hours! You can download the conversation over at GSSA right here. Happy listening!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! How did everyone enjoy Free Agent Frenzy Week? Regular visitors to this site know very well about my love of this week, not to mention Trade Deadline Day. These are my two favorite points of the hockey season, if you consider July hockey season. Sure, my Habs usually do diddly squat both of these times of the year, but I still love the anticipation of a big move, the utterly pointless commentary by hockey pundits (after all, there’s no telling what impact Carl Dahlstrom’s one-year $750,000 deal will have on the Leafs in 2021-22!), and the debates about which team improved itself the most (i.e. the team that will also disappoint its fans most when they struggle to make the playoffs in April). Overall, I like the Mike Hoffman deal Montreal made. Not too long a contract, not too much money committed, and if the guy can pot 25 goals or so per year, it will be worth it. Signing Mathieu Perreault could have an impact too, but probably not that much. Hopefully David Savard will bring an edge to Montreal’s defense, but I don’t expect a lot of goals from him either. Not sure if the team will be much better, but as long as the young guns like Suzuki and Caufield can improve a bit from their strong playoffs, the future looks brighter than it did even one year ago.

Anyway, what was I doing this week while the NHL’s 32 teams were doing their annual roster shuffle? I was doing some much-needed upkeep on this here site. Man, was that articles section ever getting long and tedious to scroll through. Hopefully, that problem will be behind us all as I’ve organized all the articles by year, and the articles that don’t fit into specific years have also been organized into manageable categories. Same goes for my beloved Overexposed cards. I’ve split them up into years, so you can quickly access the archives or go to the newest inductions lickety split. I’ll probably reorganize the cards themselves into decades for those of you who enjoy the crap that was produced in the 70s more than the crap that was organized in the 2000s, but that will be for another day. Just check the menu up top and select Articles and you’ll see how I’ve reorganized that section, and if you go to the Hockey Hall of Shame section, and scroll down to the Overexposed wing, you’ll see what I’ve done there.

That’s about it for this week, sorry this update isn’t more interesting, but then again neither is housekeeping. Sometimes though, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! What an exciting week this has been for the National Hockey League. Not only has the trade wire opened up leading up to the annual Entry Draft, but we also got an interesting Expansion Draft as well. I don’t know about you, but I find expansion drafts fascinating. I love thinking of the possibilities of the new team’s success and analyzing the picks as they come in. Who’s gonna stay? Who’s gonna get swapped for draft picks? Who becomes this year’s William Karlsson? Will Chris Driedger be the new Marc-Andre Fleury? Since my upcoming book deals a lot with the 1974 expansion draft, it has been interesting comparing the Seattle Kraken’s first-ever roster with those of the Kansas City Scouts and Washington Capitals. I don’t know if Seattle can repeat Vegas’s success from four years ago, but what I do know is that the Kraken definitely had a better talent pool to choose from. There are at least four or five players chosen this time around who would have scored 20 goals this past year had the season not been truncated by the pandemic. They have a former Norris Trophy winner in Mark Giordano. The Scouts and Capitals sure never had that kind of talent in their initial rosters. Neither did the California Seals nor the other five original expansion teams.

I was hoping to post an article about the 1967 expansion draft since this here is a site that focuses on the Seals, but I had already posted on a while back, and basically every article about the draft says the exact same thing. So if you would like to read up on the original expansion draft, I invite you to go to the Seals/Barons articles section and find the one I posted from a June 7, 1967 newspaper. There is also a new article as well, from exactly twenty days later, and it is about the Seals’ preparation for the 1967-68 season, the off-ice changes that had rocked the front office, and a sweet photo of the team’s original uniforms.

I hope you all enjoy the next week, including the Amateur Draft and Free Agent Frenzy Day next Wednesday! I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears peeled, as I’m sure you all will as well.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It’s been a long, arduous year for hockey fans everywhere. We’ve had not one, but two seasons interrupted by COVID. If you’re Canadian like me, you weren’t allowed anywhere near an NHL rink until this summer (THAT sounds weird, doesn’t it?). Then again, the Leafs hilariously failed once again (I’ll NEVER forget the sight of beloved Toronto symbol, the CN Tower bathed in Canadiens red-white-and-blue light… priceless, I tells ya.), so not everything went ziggy-zaggy this year.

The voting for this year’s inductees into the Seals Hall of Fame had a few glitches, if you remember. Multiple sites needed to be used to calculate the votes, but once we got all that sorted out, all the ballots were counted and the results are now in. I’m sure you are all excited to find out if your favorites got in. Everyone on this year’s ballot was a worthy candidate, but only three could make the cut.

Drumroll, please… Here are the results of this year’s vote:

Tom Thurlby – 3%

Charlie Burns – 11%

Doug Roberts – 9%

Gary Croteau – 23%

Norm Ferguson – 21%

Joe Starkey – 14%

Fred Glover – 12%

Garry Young – 7%

Congratulations to Gary Croteau, Norm Ferguson, and Joe Starkey on their nominations to our sacred online Hall! No real prize to be handed out, no plaques or trophies, just something to hang your hat on. Something you can mention in interviews, books, etc. if the conversation starts to lag just a bit. You’re welcome!

If you would like to check out the 2021 Seals Hall of Fame inductees page, you can click here.

On a more personal note, I’m happy to announce that the cover photo of my new book, When the NHL Invaded Japan: the Washington Capitals, the Kansas City Scouts and the Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Cup, 1975-76, has been uploaded to the McFarland Press website, so you can check out some of the book’s details, as well as other McFarland books here. You can either pre-order it on the McFarland site or you can do so at Amazon.com. Don’t hold out much hope of reading it anytime soon, however, as the release date is currently listed at January 20, 2022. It still hasn’t been edited yet and I have yet to see the proofs in pdf format. That said, don’t think for a second that your credit card doesn’t want some air and exercise, if you know what I mean, so release that plastic slab from its leather prison anytime, folks!

On a final, sadder note, I regret to inform you that former Seal Bryan “Bugsy” Watson passed away July 8, at the age of 78. My sincerest condolences to the Watson family and to his former teammates.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! So, the Cup Final hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped… Lots of turnovers (Joel Edmundson, my GOD!), bad bounces, flukes galore, AHHH! This is becoming difficult to watch. I’m not giving up hope yet, but unless things turn around fast, I’m not foreseeing a Stanley Cup parade down St. Catherine’s this summer. I need to clear my mind and start thinking of other things. What else is going on in the world these days? Remember the good old days of January 2021 when all we had to do was turn on the TV and see a nutty orange-skinned President spewing numb-nutted rants on anything and everything that had absolutely nothing to do with the state of his nation? Sure, he was/is a moron, but at least he knew how to distract everyone from reality. I need a distraction bad, man!

Here’s something… What’s the deal with this new “Grand Big Mac” I keep hearing about? Why is everyone in those Questrade commercials look and sound so unbelievably smug that I just want to punch them in the throat? Why does “Ba-Ba Black Sheep” sound exactly like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and the “Alphabet Song”? Man, the guy who wrote the music for those songs must have made a killing on royalties. Or what about “Here Comes the Bride”? Talk about a song that has been played a lot. I wonder if anyone has ever got married in the middle of a NHL game. Interesting. Did that ever happen in Oakland? Would anyone even want to do that considering most weddings are intimate celebrations with priests and hymns, maybe a city-appointed officiant, probably not a lot of hockey jerseys and pucks in the area. Hmm… quick Google Search… nothing. Let’s check the old personal archives… HEY, here’s something! Someone actually did ask the Seals if they could get married in the middle of a game, and you can read all about it right here. (And here you were wondering how I was going to tie in this year’s Stanley Cup Final to something regarding the California Golden Seals)

I’d like to close this week by thanking all of you who participated in the voting for this year’s new inductees to the Seals Hall of Fame. More votes were cast this year than in any previous year! There will be no site update next week, as I will need to go over the ballots and also create a 2021 section in the Hall of Fame, but the following week will be induction time, so be sure to check us out.

See ya in two weeks! Stay gold!

Hi everyone! Well… Yes, that was a surprise. You know what I’m talking about. To quote the great Clark W. Griswold Jr., “If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am now.” I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER would have expected to read the following words: Montreal Canadiens, Campbell Conference Champions. Not only would I never have expected my fave team to win what is normally a Western-based trophy, but to see my team pose for photos wearing hats that said “Stanley Cup Final” blows my freakin’ mind. I mean, who here predicted Montreal, the lowest-ranked team in the playoffs, to not only beat Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vegas, but qualify for the final round? Who would have picked Montreal to have killed off every single shorthanded situation in, what, 13 straight games? Certainly not me. Sorry Habs, but no. Last night, when Artturi Lehkonen scored the game 6 OT winner, I just leaned back in my seat, looked up at the ceiling and said out loud, “I can’t believe they did it.” I still can’t believe they did it after the dumpster fire last month of the regular season. As I write this, Tampa is leading the Islanders 1-0 about mid-way through the second period, so we’ll see how things shape up. All I know is that I ain’t missing a minute of the next 4-7 games.

Anyway, I had to get those thoughts off my chest, so sorry about that. I know this is a site dedicated to the California Seals, but I got to look elsewhere once in a while for some inspiration, right? This week, I’ve added the second article from the Goal magazine I received a few weeks ago. This one is about the “Pocket Wrecker” (you read that right) Dennis Maruk, who just one month into his NHL career, was already making a major impact with his first pro team. You can read John Porter’s excellent article right here.

This is also the last week for all of you to cast your votes for this year’s inductions into the Seals Hall of Fame, so if you haven’t done so already, you can vote here. This year’s vote has been very exciting. More ballots have been cast this year than in any previous year, so thank you to all of you who have participated, and all of you who plan on participating this week. The new inductees will be announced Friday, July 16, so be sure to check out the site on that day!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It’s been two weeks since my parental leave kicked in and I couldn’t be happier. I’m less stressed. I’m sleeping well. I’ve been getting lots of fresh air and sunshine. Life is good. And my Habs are surprisingly still in the playoffs, which I never would have imagined just one month ago.

Let’s get down to business, shall we? So who is the mystery Seal whose signature graces that rare 1967 pre-season-era stick? To recap, the player in question never played an official game for the Seals, yet his signature is on the stick, right next to Bob Lemieux, the other mystery Seal whose identity was revealed last week. I’m happy to say that Susan Edman had the correct guess, and it is none other than the legendary Jacques Plante, whose Seals career amounted to all of 30 minutes and two goals against in one exhibition game. There isn’t much evidence that he ever played for Oakland, but this stick definitely proves he was there, making this artifact, in my opinion, one of the rarest in team history.

For your reading pleasure, I’ve added a piece about the Seals’ Gary Sabourin, whose arrival in 1975-76 helped the team increase its point total from 51 to 65. The article comes from the Goal magazine I was sent a few weeks back, and I’ll post more stuff from it in the coming weeks. Gotta love those old timey magazines! I really have to get back on eBay and start looking for more. You can read all about Gary Sabourin right here.

There are only two weeks left to cast your vote for this year’s Seals Hall of Fame inductions, so if you haven’t yet voted, you can do so by clicking on this link. I know it’s playoff time, but sometimes you just have to do your civic duty and give democracy a hand.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It seems as though everyone has been stumped by last week’s photo challenge. You may remember I had asked you all to identify the two names on the autographed Seals stick. They are definitely NOT easy names to figure out, and you really have to know your Seals history. Here is the stick again, and the two mystery signatures:

Someone by the name of Alan (sorry, I didn’t catch your last name…) was able to identify the second signature, which belongs to Bob Lemieux, who played just 19 games in Oakland. But what about that first signature?

OK, I’ll give you guys a hint… This mystery player never actually played an official game for the Seals, so there’s no use looking him up at HockeyReference.com or Hockeydb.com. Good luck, everyone!

I recently found another interesting photo that I wanted to share with you, and hopefully, someone will be able to shed a little light on it. It is a screen shot from an old TV show called the Old Grey Whistle Test, and it features perhaps the one and only time in human history when someone famous wore a Golden Seals (knock-off) jersey on national television.

The guy playing guitar is the legendary Mick Ronson, and he was the Frank Welker of axe strummers in the 1970s, playing with everyone from David Bowie to Lou Reed to Elton John to Bob Dylan. If Jesus Christ and Saint Peter had a prog rock band going in the day, he probably played with them too. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an afficionado of all things classic rock. I’ve got a more-than-impressive CD collection that includes complete discographies of great bands, bootlegs, rare concerts, illegal Russian versions, and everything in between, but Mick Ronson’s career has completely fallen through the cracks of my collection. I really don’t know much about Ronson, so the reason he’s wearing Seals paraphernalia completely escapes me. Mad props to the dude for showing the Seals some love at a time when both they and the sport of hockey were almost complete afterthoughts to the average sports fans. I mean, it’s not like you could just go over to Amazon and pick up one of those green-and-gold badboys back in the mid-1970s. If anyone out there can fill me in on why he’s supporting the Seals on TV, please let me know. And if anyone can tell me why that lit-up guy in the top-right corner is karate-kicking that star where the sun don’t shine, I’d appreciate that too!

Before closing out today’s update, I invite you to vote for the nominees you feel are most worthy of a spot in the Seals Hall of Fame, class of 2021. You can click on the Jotform link here to cast your votes. There’s less than a month left before the voting closes, so if you haven’t already done your civic duty, I urge you to do so now.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Do I really need to explain the title of this week’s entry? Unless you’ve been living under a rock that has been buried six feet underground and covered in a thick layer of cement you know exactly what I’m talking about! That Montreal series win has to rank in my Top 10 favorite personal moments, ever. I barely slept that night, I was so drunk off that win. And the next day, I downloaded so many meme photos and so many Twitter quips, I actually had to tell myself, “OK, Steve, I think that’s enough for today.” I mean, too much of a good thing is not necessarily a good thing. I honestly felt like I ate an entire chocolate cake and then chowed down on a extra large pepperoni pizza. The whole experience left me feeling bloated. That said, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Making matters even better, I received a wonderful package in the mail from site visitor Kristie Kitchens, who while cleaning out her mother’s house, found a few vintage Seals items that had been acquired over the years. Her mother and step-father were big Seals fans, so they had picked up a few cool items, such as an awesome-looking lidless stein, a Seals puck, a Goal magazine featuring Gilles Meloche on the cover, a couple of pins, and Booster Club sticker. Thanks so much Kristie! Check out some of this cool memorabilia over in the photos section.

And for something a bit different this week, it’s quiz time! This one is a bit of a noodle-scratcher, so put on your thinking caps. During the 1967 pre-season, 16 members of California Seals signed this stick, which is now owned by Dave Martell of Global Vintage Sports Memorabilia. Thanks Dave for sending these shots of this incredibly rare piece of Seals memorabilia!

Most of the signatures are pretty recognizable. There’s Bobby Baun, Kent Douglas, Gary Smith, Bill Hicke, and many others, but there are two signatures that are not so easy to decipher.

The question I have for all of you is, “Whose signatures are these?” I think I’ve figured them out, but we’ll see who out there in Internet land can come up with the same answers. No prize for guessing the correct names, just an opportunity for someone out there to puff out their chest a little bit. Feel free to send me your guesses and we’ll see how many of you, if anyone at all, can correctly guess the two mystery signatures.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! It’s been one busy week! Getting ready to go on parental leave in June, so I’ve had to start delegating tasks to other people and training them to replace me, but it looks like that responsibility is now past me, and things should start calming down at the office before I head into the hectic world of child-rearing, handing out apple-guacamole-fig (or something like that) fruit pouches, and preparing Kraft Dinner for lunch Monday to Friday. I’m looking forward to spending the summer months taking care of my two kids, taking daily walks to the park, and eating popsicles in the middle of the day, but I do fear those days when all the neighbourhood kids congregate in our backyard and start combining the contents of our sandbox with the contents of my daughter’s water table and throwing the final product all over the place, breaking our toys and climbing all over our new $2,600 dollar fence.

That said, I’ve gotten past stage two of my manuscript submission (editing down magazine quotes, getting last-minute interview and photo permissions, and cleaning up sources), so at least that’s one more thing out of the way. It’s all in McFarland’s hands now until they send me an edited version of my work. I’m getting very excited about the new book, but I hope the next big stage of the process happens sometime in the fall once the kids go back to school/daycare and life returns to normal. All in all, things are good, and there is the feeling that we’re all moving on to another stage of life and career. And it’s the playoffs too!

Yes, that wonderful time of the year most Seals fans never got to experience. There were those eleven sad playoff contests in April 1969 and 1970, but nothing else. Most of those games have been forgotten, but there is one that stands out as being rather controversial: game one of the West Division semi-finals against Pittsburgh. Not many Seals fans are still around who remember that night, but those who do probably still curse Nick Harbaruk’s name. If you don’t know how the game ended and why it was so controversial, I invite you to head on over to the articles section and read all about it..

Before leaving, if you haven’t yet voted for who you believe should be inducted into the Seals Hall of Fame, you can do so by clicking on this link: https://form.jotform.com/210704845040244. Voting will remain open until the end of June, and the newest inductees will be announced in mid-July like we do every year.

Until next time, stay gold!