In watching a lot of these classic NHL games on TV to satisfy my need for sports during this pandemic, I’ve noticed that the game definitely had a lot more clutching and grabbing than I remember. Case in point, this week’s Overexposed card featuring the Florida Panthers’ Johan Garpenlov. Take a look at the moment when a photographer captured the guy getting his lunch money stolen by a gang of angry schoolyard thugs.

This week’s Seals article is not so much about mugging your fellow man, but more about pushing and shoving a… wait, what’s that I see? Is that a cartoon Seal shoving a boy scout in the face? Yup, that’s what it is all right, and it can be found right here in the latest Lee Susman cartoon which was published just before the Seals’ first-ever game against the Kansas City Scouts October 23, 1974. This week’s article is not a very long one, but more of a companion piece to the Susman caroon. It is interesting that the Seals may have been giving the expansion Scouts a little extra motivation by not being able to name a single one of them when asked to do so by a Bay Area reporter, which was strange considering four-year Seals veteran Gary Croteau was now on the Scouts’ roster.

Also, friend of the site Greg Enright let me know recently that his book titled The Pittsburgh Penguins: the First 25 Years has been published, and it looks like a great read, which I’m looking forward to digging into. Most of you here right now are fans of old-school hockey and the post-expansion era, so you’ll want to check out this book. There is a sample on Amazon, and it is available there, but in Kindle form only. If you prefer a more traditional softcover version, you can pick it up on the McFarland website here.

In closing this week, I’m sending out an S.O.S. (thanks, Sting!) hoping a few of you out there can think of some brutally awkward hockey cards that need to be posted on this site. In fact, if anyone has any suggestions for topics they would like to see roasted in the Hockey Hall of Shame, send them on over to me, and I’ll see what I can do to make your dreams come true! And once you’re done sending me snaps of God-awful cardboard crap and goofy hockey marketing ideas, don’t forget to vote for your picks for the Seals Hall of Fame. The online ballot is right there to your right, and you can vote up to three times per device.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! With all the talk about hockey coming back, there is finally a little enthusiasm in the air. Sure, no one will actually be able to attend any games, but in my opinion, as long as there is some sort of competitive current-day sports for us to watch on TV, I’m happy. Not sure if the excitement is similar to the excitement that Seals fans felt after their team won their opening game of 1973-74, but I needed some sort of introduction to this article I wanted to post, so voilà! As an added bonus, there is also a nice Lee Susman cartoon from the previous day’s Oakland Tribune.

And for those of you who are wrestling with the notion of retiring, but are not sure if you still want to go to the office every day even though your boss has told you don’t work there anymore because you were replaced with someone else, well have I got an Overexposed card for ya! It features little-known, but rather underrated defenseman Tom Edur in an underrated O-Pee-Chee blunderfest from 1978-79.

As always, a friendly reminder to vote for the people you believe should be inducted into the Seals Hall of Fame. While the hockey world is completely shut down right now, we keep chugging along and taking your votes, so start clickin’ if you haven’t done so already.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I’m sure you’ve all been immersed in a number of books since you’ve been in self-isolation mode. I know I have. I’ve read through Henry Boucha’s autobiography, a history of the Montreal Canadiens-Quebec Nordiques rivalry, and I’m in the process of reading a history of the Vegas Golden Knights as well as The Curse, a history of the L.A. Clippers of the NBA. It’s been nice having time to read so much and catch up on all those books I’ve collected over the years but never had a chance to read, so I thought I’d share with you my views on a book on NHL expansion, Changing the Game by Stephen Laroche. It contains a chapter on the Seals so if you haven’t read this book before, you may be interested in doing so now that you have some spare time. You can read my review of it here.

I’ve also added an article on the night Rick Hampton broke the Seals’ record for most points by a defenseman in a season. I always felt Hampton, like many other high draft picks of doormat teams, got a bad rap as he was asked to deliver the impossible even though he wasn’t even legally old enough to drink. He was in way over his head as the third overall pick in the 1974 amateur draft. In any other year, he probably would have been a low first-round pick, maybe even a second-rounder, but because the WHA had signed so many under-aged players, many who would have been drafted lower were drafted way too high. The ’74 draft, not to mention the next few drafts, were among the weakest in hockey history as first and second overall picks were not nearly as great as previous tip top draftees like Guy Lafleur and Denis Potvin.

As an added bonus to the Hampton article, there is also a cartoon from the Oakland Tribune‘s Lee Susman, courtesy of Bob Marceau, who also sent me the article, and several others I’ll be posting in the coming weeks.

That’s about it for this week. Stay healthy and stay safe. Enjoy your time with your families and take advantage of the nice weather as Spring rolls in. Read a good book in your back yard, bask in the sunshine, and drink lots of coffee and beer!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! A lot to discuss this week, so let’s get started…

Well, another week has gone by with really very little to report on the NHL front, except for a non-stop series of rumours. Is the NHL coming back? If they do, do they continue with the regular season? Do they just let in the top 16 teams regardless of the number of games they have left to play? Do they invite all 31 teams to the dance? Who the hell knows? Personally, I’m no fan of the 31-team proposal even if that means my Habs missing the playoffs yet again. I just don’t think that a team that played terribly in the regular-season should get a free pass to the playoffs. I also don’t feel it’s fair some team ranked 9th in a conference but with a game or two in hand should miss the playoffs all on account of a virus wiping out the remainder of the regular season. That, and it would give the hated Leafs a free pass to the playoffs, so forget that proposal too. I think the league should invite all the teams who are reasonably close to a playoff spot and have the lowest ones, maybe even all the teams, compete in a best-of-three preliminary round like back in the late 70s, and then once you have 16 teams left, you have a regular old playoff. Of course, before any of that happens, you need to give the players a short training camp so that they can burn off the extra calories they put on in self-isolation, so who knows how, when, or if the season ever gets back on track.

This week, in (late) commemoration of the Seals’ final game, April 4, 1976, a nice piece from the Oakland Tribune courtesy of the great John Porter. Thanks to Bob Marceau for sending this article my way as I had never read it before. As a added bonus, there is also a cartoon from the Tribune‘s Lee Susman. You can find it all here in the Seals/Barons articles section.

On a sad note, I’m sorry to announce the death of former Seal, and WHA Hall of Famer Tom Webster, 71. This comes just a day after the passing of another WHA Hall of Famer and former Chicago Black Hawks star defenseman Pat Stapleton. Webster was sent to Oakland in a one-for-one swap for defenseman Ron Stackhouse, which was a fair deal, but Webster played only a handful of games for the Seals at the start of the 1971-72 season before going down with a leg injury. He had scored 30 goals for Detroit the year before, so the hope was for him to come back and be a major contributor to the Seals’ offense in 1972-73, but the World Hockey Association came calling and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Webster, like many other former Seals who left the white skates behind, became a big star in the rebel league, scoring 425 points in 352 games leaving many Seals fans to wonder how the team’s fortunes could have been different had the WHA never sprung up in the first place. His best game in Oakland was October 27, 1971 when he scored a goal and an assist, his first two points as a Seal. You can read the write-up to this game in the Seals/Barons articles section.

Until next time, stay gold, and please stay safe and healthy.

Hi everyone! Well, it’s now been three weeks since sports came to a sad and sudden end, and we’re still here. It’s been nice to be able to catch up on some NHL classics on Sportsnet. I got to watch Ron Tugnutt’s 70-save masterpiece against Boston from 1991, a game I remember hearing about the next day, but had never seen. I also got to see the 1980 All-Star game which featured Reggie Leach and Gilles Meloche. I’ve got an ’82 Vancouver Canucks-Chicago Black Hawks game as well as game six of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals on tap in the next few days, so I’m looking forward to those. Still, they are not the same as watching a game where you don’t already know the outcome ahead of time.

In this week’s blast from the past we’ve added a new piece on Gary Smith’s tough game on March 2, 1969, in which the Seals blew a 4-1 lead to Philadelphia and ended up in a 4-4 tie. You can find this week’s article, as usual, in the Seals/Barons articles section.

And in a brand new Overexposed, we’re featuring Tom Kurvers in either the most selfish or the most depressing moment of his life. It’s a card whose background story is arguably more confounding than an episode of Tiger King. Or maybe I’m once again just reading way too much into a simple early 90s hockey card. I leave it up to you to look at the evidence right here and decide for yourself.

Before you go, be sure to vote for the player or players you feel deserve to be inducted into the Seals Hall of Fame for 2020. You can vote up to three times per device and the voting will continue into early July like we’ve always done here at Golden Seals Hockey.

WordPress has also made a long-awaited and much appreciated update to its parameters and functions, so this site is just about back to where it was before the unpleasantness occurred before Christmas, which made updating this site a real ordeal. That being said, you can once again subscribe to this site to receive this kind of update each and every week! Go ahead and sign up right now by typing in your e-mail address over on the right-hand side of the page. It’s free and it’s fun! Besides, it’s not like you’ll be going out to the restaurant, the opera or Disneyworld today or anytime soon, so go ahead, sign up! I promise you won’t regret it!

Until next time, stay safe and stay gold!

Hi everyone! I received an e-mail from site visitor and Seals fan Stephane Quinty last week, which I thought you all should read. It’s a great little snippit from the life of Pete Laframboise, the first player in Seals history to score four goals in a game. You may remember the game, the famous 11-3 thrashing of the Vancouver Canucks where Charlie Finley, attending his first game of the season, was whooping it up and hollering, and wondering what all the fuss was about in Oakland, because these guys were great! Anyway, enough with the introduction. Here is Stephane’s e-mail:

“I worked for Peter Laframboise from 1992 until his death in 2011. Knowing this, my brother got me your book for Xmas. He was an extremely colourful character who could be generous to a fault but also had it in him to be a tough sob when he needed to be. I’ve been a lifelong Habs fan since the 70’s but the first thing I asked him when we met was about dealing with the Broad Street Bullies. He replied “we beat up so much on each other in Junior that we pretty much left each other alone after that”. I’m not sure how accurate that is after reading your book but perhaps you can shed more light than I can.

“When the Ottawa Senators joined the league and were close to beating the Washington Capitals record for futility, the late (great) Brian Smith came to our shop to interview Peter about being part of that expansion team and how difficult it was to be a part of it. He said that in the dressing room, they didn’t talk about winning, they talked about keeping it close.

“The last tidbit I have about him is that there is a tavern near where our shop used to be where we would drink quarts on Friday afternoons after payday but it was allegedly not the safest place to be after hours. Pete was in his element in that place (for better or worse) but he did make me laugh on one occasion when he said that one guy was giving him a bit too much of a hard time so Pete said that he dialed into his NHL past, pulled the sweater over his head and gave him the business.”

Thanks Stephane from one Ottawan (and Habs fan) to another!

Here’s a little riddle for all of you: How do you get old young?

If you’re looking for the answer, head on over to the articles section and find out how this riddle is related to the California Golden Seals.

Until next time, stay gold, and please stay safe locked away in your home!

Hi everyone! I don’t know about you, but I’m bored. It’s been, what, two months since the sports world went dark, and… what’s that? One week? IT’S ONLY BEEN A FREAKIN’ WEEK???!!! Holy sweet Jesus, what the hell am I gonna do for the next… who the hell knows how long! Man, this sucks. At least during a hockey lockout, you’ve got the good old NBA, some Blue Jays baseball, even the always exciting UFC, but now? OK, calm blue ocean… I’m one with the universe… just a piece of driftwood floating down the river. OK, I think I’m alright. Onto this week’s business.

I was looking through my archives and I found two interesting pieces on the Seals Booster Club. Let’s go back in time when life was a LOT simpler, when the Booster Club, 130+ members strong was craving the return of the NHL to the Bay Area. By 1991, that dream came true, but before it did, what was the Club up to. You can find out in the two new articles from 1988 and 1991, both from the San Francisco Examiner in the articles section.

If you’ve got time (oh, come on, that’s the ONE thing we’ve all got in spades right now, and we’ve got to do something to pass it, right?), head on over to the right-hand side of the screen and cast your vote up to three times for who you feel should be inducted into the Seals Hall of Fame for 2020. The leading vote getters will be formally inducted in July, as tradition dictates on this here site.

Until next time, stay healthy!

Hi everyone! I imagine these posts are going to become incredibly boring in the next few weeks now that there is literally no sports, let alone hockey, on TV anymore, and that for the next Lord-knows-how-many weeks. “Thank God for Netflix” is all I can say right now, because we are truly going to need it. All of the schools across the province of Ontario are shutting down for two weeks, not to mention every museum, amusement park, and city-organized activity. Movie theatres are only selling half the tickets they usually do to curb the spread of the Coronavirus, so may or may not be able to take our son out for an afternoon. Oh, March is going to be one interesting month, but rest assured, Golden Seals Hockey is going nowhere! No postponements or cancellations here! Except for all those times I go for long weekends to visit the family in the Townships, but those times and the Coronavirus scheduling issues are strictly a coincidence.

This week, I’ve posted a brand new article, maybe the only article that is even remotely related to what is going on in the world today. I’m talking about the first of just two games in Seals/Barons history to be played after having been postponed. It wasn’t postponed due to disease, but due to the 1972 World Series.

And in a new Overexposed article that has absolutely nothing to do with flu-like symptoms, we present to you the New York Rangers’ Paul Broten in a classic (nah, not really) hockey pose from the 1992-93 Upper Deck set.

Take care of yourselves, folks. Buy lots of Purell, pick up some new hobbies to stave off boredom, and please, for the love of God, stop hoarding toilet paper! You know what I mean.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Before we all start dropping like flies from this new coronavirus thing, we can take some solace in the fact that spring is around the corner, and that winter snowfalls are going to be interspersed with longer warmish periods, smooth morning commutes, and pleasant afternoons basking in the sunshine. That being said, we did have a pretty good dose of snow a few days ago which, for some reason practically shut down all of Ottawa. Maybe it’s the Canadian in me who has just become accustomed to snow to the point where if there isn’t twelve feet of the stuff on the road, I go to work with a smile on my face. The weather experts wanted us all to stay home, because they believed the apocalypse was imminent, and a lot of us did stay home, but not me, and I’m glad I listened to my gut, because not only was there far less snow during the morning commute than expected, but by the afternoon, the roads were nice and clear, and those 40cm they had been predicted for Ottawa, melted almost immediately upon hitting the pavement. I guess we were lucky we didn’t get another 53cm dumping like we got one afternoon about four years ago, but it doesn’t always turn out that way. Sometimes, there is so much snow, you can’t even get out the door. Case in point, January 26, 1978…

This week, I’ve posted an article from the franchise’s final days, about a game in which the Cleveland Barons lost 5-0 in front of just 527 fans. Believe it or not, the game did not take place in the cavernous Richfield Coliseum, but in Chicago Stadium, and fans stayed away because it was just safer to stay home than trudge through a blizzard. You can read it in the articles section.

In the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, we have a brand new card that asks the question, “Is Mike Ricci having some major digestive issues, or is he just really, really intense about playing hockey?” I’ll let you decide by checking out our brand new induction right here.

Before you head off to do other things in your life, take a few seconds to cast a vote or two for the person you feel deserves to be inducted into the Seals Hall of Fame for 2020. The ballot is on the right side of the screen, and you can vote up to three times per device, so get clicking!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! I think congratulations are in order to one David Ayres for giving the world one incredible and unforgettable story, but it really is hard to believe the Leafs actually lost to a 42-year-old Zamboni driver. Well, not all that hard to believe. After all, this is the Leafs we’re talking about and it wouldn’t truly be in the Leafs’ spirit to not see them sabotage themselves on their way to another fruitless Stanley Cup chase. So, in, ahem, “honour” of one of the lowest moments in recent Leafs history we turn the way-back machine to 1967 when the Seals put their own one-game wonder in net. Only difference was that Tommy Green gave up 11 goals to an expansion team, and the Seals had already wrapped up a playoff spot. At least the San Diego Gulls took advantage of the unusual situation, not that it mattered much because they were dead last in the WHL. The Leafs, on the other hand, were fighting for a playoff spot, and yet couldn’t find the motivation necessary to turn things up a gear. Yeesh! Anyway, you can find this article from 1967, brought out from the mothballs of the site’s archives, right here.

And if you want to better appreciate the wonderfulness that was February 22, 2020, I invite you to head on over to the Hockey Hall of Shame for a brand new induction! If you’re an English major or just a fan of low-brow humour, you are in for a treat, my friend!

Finally, my weekly reminder to place your vote for the 2020 Seals Hall of Fame induction. Sure, there is still lots of time left, but that doesn’t mean you should wait until the last minute! Remember, you can vote up to three times per device, so get clicking! Until next time, stay gold!