Hi everyone! This week is the 42nd anniversary of the Seals’ official announcement that they would be moving to Cleveland for the 1976-77 season. To commemorate this moment every year, we always do a little something extra here on the site, and we also induct new members to Seals Hall of Fame. Thanks to everyone who voted over the last few months, and also to those who voted a second time to help break the four-way tie for the final spot in this year’s group of inductees. As you may remember from last week, Bert Marshall and Rick Hampton were both inducted on the first ballot, and I’m happy to announce that Walt McKechnie will be joining the two defensemen in the Hall. You can read all about their careers with the Seals and Barons right here.

New to the site this week, we have a new article from the Oakland Tribune about the Seals’ one-season wonder Dennis Hextall. He really came into his own in 1970-71, scoring a team-leading 52 points, but that would be small potatoes compared to the numbers he would put up in Minnesota after the Seals traded him there for Joey Johnston and Walt McKechnie. All in all, that wasn’t a bad trade for either team. Hextall was definitely no choir boy, as you probably know, and in his one-season with California, he was a one-man wrecking crew taking on all comers.

There is also a new induction to the Hockey Hall of Shame’s Overexposed wing. This time, it is an absorbing, sensitive, black-and-white exposé of… ah, who are we kidding here; it’s just a really goofy, unnecessary photo of Glen Murray that never should have seen the light of day, and you can find it right here.

To complete the trifecta of new material, I’m also including a link to a brand new article about the history of the Cleveland Barons’ draft picks. Actually a pretty short history, because, as you may or may not know, the Barons only participated in one amateur draft, that being the 1977 edition. The year prior, the team was still known as the Golden Seals, and the year after, the Barons merged with the Minnesota North Stars. Check out Nathaniel Oliver’s article at the Hockey Writers web site: https://thehockeywriters.com/cleveland-barons-nhl-draft-history/.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone! Well, I went and spoiled the surprise, didn’t I? I wasn’t paying attention when I was writing up this entry, and I accidentally hit “publish” instead of “save” and so you all got to see two-thirds of the Seals Hall of Fame inductees for 2018. It was kind of a stressful day, so my brain was not in full-on website updating mode.

The newest inductees to the Seals Hall of Fame are (tada!) Bert Marshall (17.3% of the total votes) and Rick Hampton (11.5%). The third inductee is none other than… wait a minute, what’s this? A four-way tie for third place? Walt McKechnie, Joe Starkey, Bill Hicke, and Charlie Burns all ended up with 9.6% of the vote. Whatever are we going to do? I’ll tells ya: we’re gonna have a one-week final vote to determine who gets in this year. I said there wouldn’t be much of an update this week due to the fact I’ll be preparing some stuff for next week’s Hall of Fame induction, but when I saw there was a four-way tie for the last spot in the Hall, I needed to think of some way to determine who would get in this year, so I’m turning to you once again…

If you check out the right-hand side of the page, there is a new survey. Please choose the person you feel is most deserving of the last spot in the 2018 Seals Hall of Fame inductee list. This time, however, you can only vote once. The deadline will be next Friday, July 13th, and the winner will be announced the following week.

If you like surveys, I’d also like to draw your attention to the Greatest Individual Achievement in Franchise History poll, which can be found right here.

As usual, I’m also going to remind you to head on over to Amazon.com to leave some feedback about my book, if you haven’t done so already. So far, the feedback has been great, and it has definitely helped push a few units, so please keep it up, folks!

As always, thanks for your support, comments, and feedback! Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone! It’s been a bit of a rough week for Steve. Work has been super stressful this week due to the fact it’s summer time, meaning we are constantly short-staffed due to the summer holidays, but that also means the paycheques are getting bigger due to an increase in hours, so I can’t complain too much. I just wish I had more time to devote to this site and to my writing, which when I don’t get to do, I tend to get a little stressed, and frankly, a little cranky because writing is my drug. Well, unless I have a fridge full of Alexander Keith’s amber ales, then THAT’S my drug of choice. But writing is second, so it’s nice to finally get the chance to put down a few thoughts down. Luckily for me, it’s the weekend, but not just any other weekend; it’s Canada Day weekend, meaning three full days off, and since it is going to be disgustingly hot and humid in Ottawa the next few days, I’ve got an excuse to stay inside and relax and write.

Last weekend was the Ottawa Small Book Fair, which I attended with absolutely no expectations. I told my wife I would be surprised if I sold three or four copies, and she was surprised I would set my bar so low. There’s a reason for that. At the Seals/Barons 50th anniversary event last October, I sold fifteen books, which I was informed by other writers in attendance that this total was pretty impressive and that I should not expect such luck at all book signings. It’s also important to remember that literally everyone there had some sort of connection or devotion to the Seals, so I wasn’t all that surprised people were excited to fork over $40 for a signed copy. This time around, however, I didn’t sell a single copy, but I still consider the Small Book Fair to be a success because 1) most of the writers there were selling poetry and paperback novels which were selling for less than $20 (some poetry was self-published in small booklets, so they were going for just a few bucks each). My fancy hardcover book didn’t stand much of a chance; 2) I got to meet some great writers, and we all got to bounce ideas off each other; and 3) I now know where I’ll try to sell books in the future, and I have some great ideas on how to promote my work, so all in all, not a bad time at all this past weekend. Considering it costs just $12.50 for a half-table, I’ll probably try my luck again this fall.

As for new stuff on the site this week, there is a new article on the little-remembered Finley ultimatum from September 1970. When Finley bought the Seals during the summer, he thought many players hadn’t pulled their own weight the season before, which is an odd thing to say since Finley was not even there when the Seals got swept by Pittsburgh in the first round of the playoffs.

There is also a brand new induction to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame. It is a screaming good time, I can promise you that.

Next week, there will be no update as I’ll be preparing for the big reveal: Who will be the three new inductees to the Seals Hall of Fame? Voting will officially end Friday, July 6, so if you haven’t voted yet, do so before it’s too late. The newest inductees will be announced the following week, July 13.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Hope everyone enjoyed the NHL awards last night. I thought it was actually pretty good, and low on the typical cheese factor. Not too many hokey hockey jokes, which was a nice change, and the tribute to the Humboldt Broncos was rather nice. Overall, it was a classy affair with lots of entertainment value, even though my Habs went unrepresented, not that they had done much this season to deserve any cameo appearances in Vegas unless they wanted to play a little Blackjack on their desert golf trip.

With the NHL awards over and done with, that means the official end of the 2017-18 season, which means it’s draft time. And that means lots of trades to go along with the addition of several potential new star players to the league. To commemorate the high-point of the summer trading season, I’ve added an article about one of the Seals’ most famous trades: Carol Vadnais and Don O’Donoghue for Reggie Leach, Bobby Stewart, and Rick Smith. Simply put, it was one of the Seals’ best trades. Leach became a huge star in the mid-70s, and Stewart was a solid, tough defenseman for California and Cleveland for over six years. Smith didn’t stay long in Oakland, but he also enjoyed a pretty good career mostly spent with the Boston Bruins and the MInnesota Fighting Saints of the WHA. Vadnais, of course, went on to play over 1,000 NHL games, and he won a Stanley Cup with Boston in 1972, so the Bruins got exactly what they were hoping for in the deal. I can only hope that Montreal got themselves a pretty good player in Max Domi, but he seems to be yet another small forward, which Montreal has plenty of, and I have a bad feeling when Galchenyuk gets to Arizona, he is going to play at centre, and he is going to kill it. Besides, Domi had only 9 goals last year, and 4 were empty-netters. I’m hoping those were fluke numbers, but to paraphrase Gob Bluth, I believe the Canadiens have made a huge mistake…

And as usual, it’s time for me to shill a little bit…

This week, I’d like to ask you all to head over to Amazon to write a short review of my book, The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams. If you prefer though, another you can do to help out would be to request the book at your local library, and I mean ANY library. The most libraries know about the book, and the more people request it, the more libraries are going to bite.

Time is also running out to cast your votes for the 2018 Seals Hall of Fame, so get to clicking on the right-hand side of the page. The leading vote-getters will be announced in three weeks!

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another exciting update from Golden Seals Hockey, your home for all things related to golden seals (the hockey kind only, sorry…) and, uh, hockey. I guess that part is pretty obvious.

Congratulations to the Washington Capitals for their excellent playoff and the capture of their very first Stanley Cup championship. Congratulations also to the Vegas Golden Knights for providing, in my opinion, the greatest story the NHL has seen in many a year. I absolutely loved following the Knights and seeing them knock off one expansion record after another. I think at this point they literally have every positive record for an expansion team, and I’m willing to bet they will never be broken. I also love the fact that these two teams have either a direct or indirect link to the book I’m now writing about the 1974 expansion that welcomed Kansas City and Washington to the fold. Washington, of course, is still the worst expansion team of all-time, and Kansas City wasn’t far off, whereas the Knights are the all-time best expansion team. How did the 1974 draft turn out so badly, yet the 2017 draft turned out so well? And why did it take the Capitals so long to finally win their first championship? I’m looking forward to diving deeper into these two questions.

Anyway, back to the subject of the website: the Seals. I came across a great article last weekend that had slipped under my radar for two years. I remember reading in Brad Kurtzberg’s Shorthanded: the Untold Story of the Seals, that Stan Gilbertson had seemingly vanished into thin air. No one seemed to know where he was, or what he was doing. A lot of people were worried about his well-being. Then, NHL Network Radio’s Mick Kern took it upon himself to find out what happened to Stan, and I’ve added his article to the site so you can all read about his search.

And there’s also a brand new induction to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, and it’s a real stinker. You’ll just have to go check it out for yourself to see what I mean.

Until next time, enjoy the NHL awards (which might be future induction material if they keep hauling out more D-list celebrities…), and enjoy the NHL draft as well, which with the current Mike Hoffman-Erik Karlsson saga, might be extremely interesting…

And stay gold!

Hi everyone! With the Washington Capitals’ huge game five victory Thursday night, that just about wraps up another great NHL season. And now my favorite part of the NHL season begins. That is unless my beloved Habs are in the final themselves, then that is my favorite part of the season, but that hasn’t happened since I was in grade school, so I take what I can get to find true hockey happiness. My favorite part of the hockey season is (usually) June and early July when players start getting swapped around for fifth-round picks and used jock straps, and we get the endless analysis about how signing David Clarkson to a five-year deal is a franchise-altering decision (indeed it was, just not in the way the Toronto Maple Leafs expected). I can only imagine which third-line schlub is going to win the lottery this time around. My money is on Rick Nash, whose career has been on a severe down slide the last five years or so; therefore, he will be highly sought after, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. Patrick Maroon seems like another guy some team will believe is going to score a solid thirty goals every year for the next five years, and then he’ll get nothing more than half that, and the team that signs him will be left scratching their noggins. Put Paul Stastny on that list too. He had a great playoff for Winnipeg, and like most UFAs who have great playoffs after a bunch of so-so regular seasons, the May offensive outburst is usually an aberration, and he’ll go back to scoring 40-50 points a year. The difference, however, is that starting in 2018 he’ll get way too much money to do it. In a recent issue of The Hockey News, they mention the best and worst signings of every general manager in the league, and I was flabbergasted by how many albatross deals have been signed in the last decade. Since this year’s crop of free agents ain’t all that great, something tells me there are going to be a lot of big birds finding their way to new towns.

I know everything is going to get completely ridiculous and yet, I get suckered into this insanity every year…

As teams are preparing themselves for the 2018-19 season, I wanted to look back at how the Seals were preparing for their very first NHL season. This week, I’ve added a new article on the WHL California Seals’ Rudy Pilous, and the lead-up to the NHL California Seals expansion draft. Like the Vegas Golden Knights some fifty years later, Pilous was looking to draft lots of young players rather than fading veterans, which makes total sense, but there was one older dude he was looking to entice to Oakland, and that would be the legendary Jacques Plante..

In honour of the Stanley Cup final, I’ve also added a brand new induction to the Hockey Hall of Shame! It has been about a year, almost to the day, since the Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins met in game four of their Stanley Cup final series, and on this night, the Hall of Shame’s doors began creaking open to let something awful get in. If you’re a country music fan, you may want to turn away now. If you’re not a country music fan, you’ll probably want to turn away too. If you’re a fan of national anthems, you will most definitely want to click on the little X in the top right corner of your browser. You’ve been warned!

Until next time, stay gold!

 

 

Hi everyone! Indeed, like the title of this post indicates, it certainly feels like summer has arrived here in Ottawa. It’s actually been very humid and uncomfortable the last few days, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I’ll take this over the seemingly endless winter we went through this year. And to celebrate the occasion, we present you yet another in our series of 1991-92 hockey card atrocities: the classic Pavel “I’m-not-yet-in-the-NHL-but-with-this-type-of-photogenic-presence-I’m-sure-to-be-a-hit-with-the-ladies” Bure. Pavel here must have signed a rich entry-level deal with Vancouver because he certainly looked to be living it up in what was presumably his first summer in North America. He may have also taken in a couple of nearby Seattle Mariners games because I swear, in this card, it looks like he is more interested in playing baseball, but I’ll let you to decide if he ultimately made the right decision by choosing the Canucks.

In the articles section, I’ve added a great article from October 1991 which covers the Seals’ most interesting and sometimes truly bizarre moments. I received this article sometime in the mid-1990s when I started doing very preliminary research for my book. I had the idea of writing to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and asking them if they had any information on the Seals. Of course, this was long before I had access to the Internet, so this was some pretty hardcore research. A few weeks later, I received an envelope with four or five articles from the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. This week’s article is my favorite of the bunch.

Time is running out to vote for your picks for the 2018 Seals Hall of Fame, so it you haven’t voted yet, now is the time. The polls will close the first week of July, and this year’s inductees will be announced around the time of the site’s third anniversary, which also falls around the time of the Seals’ move to Cleveland.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Washington and Vegas? Never would have thought I would be writing those words in the month of May. Talk about an absolutely jaw-dropping, shocking playoff. Washington not only beat Pittsburgh, but they did so in a seventh game, breaking two long-standing negative playoff traditions. And then they go out and win a second game seven in a row, this time a shutout against the mighty Tampa Bay Lightning. As if that wasn’t surprising enough, the Vegas Golden Knights have gone 12-3 to advance to the Stanley Cup final in their first year. One thing’s for sure; someone is winning their first-ever Cup this year, and I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’m happy to finally see Ovie get his team to the final series and hopefully prove to everyone that he’s every bit as good as Crosby, but I’m also thrilled about the story that has been developing all year in Vegas. Cinderella stories like this almost never end well, but this team sure is special, and one hell of a feisty bunch.

Of course, the Seals never came close to reaching the Stanley Cup final, and their one appearance in a game seven (in 1969 versus L.A.) ended in defeat. This week, I’ve added an article that was published shortly after the Seals’ last-ever playoff game, a 3-2 overtime loss to Pittsburgh in 1970. The 1969-70 season was not exactly a banner year in Oakland. The Seals had had an impressive season the year before, but by December 1969, the team was looking a lot older and worse for wear. It was only a matter of time before the team retooled. Unfortunately, that time was one year too late.

In the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, another 1991-92 classic, this time from Upper Deck. The NHL’s 75th anniversary season was a weird time for sports card collecting. Like we’ve seen in previous inductions, everyone on planet Earth had his own hockey card clogging up the bike spokes of sixth-graders. I’m sure if I looked hard enough, I could find one or two cards of myself playing goal for my old ball hockey team. Hopefully, if I ever find that card, I won’t be dressed in the same get-up as poor Andrew Verner in his rookie card.

You may have also noticed the new ad for my book on the right-hand side of the page. Underneath, there is a little box, which if you scroll down to the bottom of it, you can go directly to Amazon to buy lots and lots of copies, or you can read a preview of the book before you go to Amazon and buy lots and lots of copies.

Weekly reminder time: Time is running out to cast your votes for the Seals Hall of Fame. The voting will be open for about another month and the new inductees will be announced in July on the site’s third anniversary.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone! Happy long weekend! Hope the weather in your neck of the woods is every bit as wonderful as it has been in Ottawa the last week or so.

The theme this week is questions, questions, questions. I’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions section to the site so you’ll be able to find answers to all those burning questions you may have about the Seals and my book, and as I think of new questions, I’ll add them to the section. Don’t be shy to ask away either!

If you need inspiration for really, really good questions, I invite you to head on over to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame. We’re going back to the 1991-92 O-Pee-Chee set for the second time in three weeks, and once again we’re featuring a Hall-of-Famer in his prime. This time around, that would be Joe Nieuwendyk as a member of the Calgary Flames. Joe will have you all pondering the meaning of life and whether or not your wife left the curling iron on this morning.

I’d also like to point out that there is a new article (April 17th) from the Ponoka (Alberta) News that mostly focuses on Stan Weir’s time with the Seals. After the article’s writer, Jordie Dwyer, did a short article on my book, he followed it up with one about Ponoka native Weir’s career. You can access the article here.

Weekly reminder time: don’t forget to cast your vote(s) for the 2018 Seals Hall of Fame. You can also vote for your favorite Seal moment in the surveys section. And of course, I always encourage you to head over to Amazon or Goodreads to post some feedback about my book to help spread the buzz.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone! These playoffs have been really fascinating compared to the last few years. The Winnipeg Jets have been a lot of fun to watch, the Leafs got struck down by Brad Marchand’s “kiss of death” (although Ryan Callaghan must have had an antidote at the ready in round two; then again, that really was more of a lick than a kiss…), Nathan Walker became the first Welsh-born player to score a playoff point since former Seals coach Jack “Tex” Evans in 1961, and the Vegas Golden Knights, against all odds, are still alive! I’ve had a great time following the Knights throughout the season, mainly because my new book (hopefully ready in time to be published around late 2019 or 2020) deals with the pitiful 1974 expansion draft, and its unfortunate participants, the Washington Capitals and Kansas City Scouts. This draft, unlike the one in which Vegas participated last year, was without a doubt the absolute worst expansion draft ever, and I mean that sincerely. Seriously, I’ve actually started studying the stats of players chosen in every expansion draft since 1967, and the title of “Worst Expansion Draft” ever is not even debatable. It will forever belong to 1974.

That the Knights have been by far the best first-year NHL team ever should not have come to anyone’s surprise. Imagine that the Knights were just handed James Neal, Jonathan Marchessault, David Perron, Erik Haula, and Marc-Andre Fleury, not to mention a career 18-goal scorer (William Karlsson) who wound up scoring 43 this season. Needless to say, neither the Scouts nor the Capitals were even remotely that lucky. Trust me, I’ve seen the protected lists of NHL teams before the 1974 draft, and thanks in part to the WHA luring several NHL players away, the Scouts and Caps were left with nothing but scraps, which easily explains why they won a combined 46 games in TWO seasons. And that includes games they won against each other! To write a book about these two teams, I must really be a glutton for punishment, but I digress…

This week, I’ve added a new review of Krazy George Henderson’s autobiography, Krazy George: Still Krazy After All These Cheers. Of course, George is known to visitors of this site as the Golden Seals’ one-man cheer-leading squad, and for years, that’s all I really knew about him, but he has in fact led a very busy life, and he has dabbled in more sports than I could have imagined. He’s cheered for literally dozens of teams, most of which you’ve probably never even heard of. His book is a very good read, and it reads really fast too, so I encourage you to pick it up at Amazon. You can also listen to the interview George did with Tim Hanlon at Good Seats Still Available, where they discuss the book: http://goodseatsstillavailable.com/listen/2017/4/15/episode-07-krazy-george-henderson-the-art-of-pro-sports-cheerleading

Also new this week, we dive back into the world of women’s hockey with a brand new induction for the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, the really bizarre Cassie Campbell card from the classic 1997-98 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice set. I feel I may be able to induct cards from that set until the end of time, and if it wasn’t for me trying to mix it up from time to time by featuring cards from different sets and different eras, I probably would because this set is absolutely disastrous. Kinda like one of those movies from Mystery Science Theater 3000 that you can’t help but be drawn to even though you know it is a complete waste of time and brain cells.

Usual reminder time: go and vote for the Seals’ all-time greatest accomplishment in the surveys section, and keep on voting for the Seals Hall of Fame inductees for 2018. Also, if you’ve got the time and the desire, please leave some feedback about my book on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. Any feedback is appreciated, and only helps get the word out about the Seals and their misunderstood history.

Until next time, stay gold!