Hi everyone!

This week, I’m pleased to announce the winners in the first two groups of the Seals/Barons Uniform Playoff.  In group A, the one representing the WHL years, the winner was the Seals’ 1966-67 jersey, the one modeled here by Gerry Odrowski.

In group B, the one representing the California/Oakland Seals of 1967-1970, the winner was a bit of a surprise to me: the 1969-70 away jersey, modeled here by Mike Laughton.

I honestly thought one of the 1967-69 jerseys would take Group B. I absolutely love the original NHL Seals’ jersey, but that’s democracy for you!

You can go to the survey section to check out the next two groups of jerseys, and vote for your favourite in each group.  Group C has jerseys from the Charlie Finley era, while Group D covers the Seals’ final two seasons when they made the switch to Pacific Blue and California Gold.

In honour of the remake of the Stephen King classic “IT”, the other new addition to the site is a disturbing hockey card hockey card from 2013-14, the only 21st-century card we’ve ever featured.  Judging by how much it made my stomach turn, it may be the last.  If you dare, venture on over to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!

In other Seals news, the October 23 event taking place at St. Mike’s College in Toronto is shaping up to be quite a night.  Wayne King and author Waxy Gregoire have both confirmed they are coming, which is great news!  Walt McKechnie, Marv Edwards, and Dick Mattiussi have been extended invitations, but have not yet confirmed they will be attending.  Unfortunately, Rick Hampton and Ron Stackhouse have confirmed they are unable to attend.  So far, however, it is shaping up to be a great evening.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone.  Welcome back for another week of California Golden Seals action and other oddball additions. A few weeks ago subscriber Warren Shapiro requested an article on Seals defenseman Bert Marshall, and so this week, I’ve added that to the articles section.  It wasn’t easy finding an article about Mr. Marshall, however, as he was not the most headline-grabbing of players scoring only 8 goals in 313 career games with the Seals.  He wasn’t a big scorer for the Seals, and by his own admission, he was not much of a fighter either.  This short piece is a funny story, told by Marshall himself, about how he confronted former San Francisco Seal Orland Kurtenbach, who was a very good fighter, one night when the Red Wings and Rangers faced each other.  You can read it here.

The other new addition to the site is a strange card from the 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee set featuring the Vancouver Canucks’ Bobby Schmautz.  When I first saw it, I could bear-ly believe it.  You’ll have to check it out for yourselves to see what I mean.

Finally, there’s some big news for any Seals and Barons fans in the Toronto area.  On October 23, Seals fan (and Golden Seals Hockey subscriber) Gene Willis is organizing a Seals/Barons Night at St. Mike’s College in Ontario’s capital city.  It’s shaping up to be a great evening.  So far, he has been able to get Bob Baun, Joey Johnston, Dennis Maruk, Terry Clancy, Howie Menard, Wayne Carleton, and Morris Mott to attend.  I will be there as well with (hopefully) a few advanced copies of my book, so if you want to pick one up a week before it hits the market, you’re (hopefully) in luck.  Gene is also hoping to have Mark Greczmiel come on down as well to show his recently-completed documentary on the Seals, but nothing confirmed yet.  As I get more details, I will post them to the site.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

 

Hi everyone! It’s great to be back after a wonderful two-week vacation.  I feel rejuvenated and looking forward to taking on new challenges.  I even got motivated enough to start work on a new book.  Originally, I was hoping my next book would be a biography of famed NHL and WHA goaltender Gilles “Gratoony the Loony” Gratton.  I was getting ready to write to him to see if the idea interested him when I noticed on Amazon that his autobiography would be coming out in October.  I was both saddened to lose out on what I thought would be a great research topic and book, and excited to see that his life would finally get the book treatment it deserves.

Undaunted, I moved on to another idea I had been toying with for a while: the 1974 expansion which welcomed the Washington Capitals and Kansas City Scouts into the NHL fold.  A few years ago, I wrote an article for the Society for International Hockey Research about the Caps and Scouts’ four-game exhibition set in Japan, which gave me the opportunity to speak to players such as Ron Lalonde, Mike Lampman, Bernie Wolfe, and Robin Burns.  I was always hoping to expand on that article and explore the first two years those teams competed in the NHL.  It had been so long since I started writing my book on the Seals, that I really had no idea how to even start a book now, so I just started writing random thoughts, analyzing a few statistics, drafting an outline, and before I knew it, I had written twenty pages or so.  With the lessons I’ve learned writing my first book, this one hopefully won’t take me two decades to write.

I also got the opportunity to scour the Internet for awful-looking pictures of hockey players just for your amusement.  Rest assured, I found some real doozies, including some pretty atrocious cards featuring this week’s subject, Manon Rheaume.  I couldn’t pick just one of these putrid pieces of cardboard, so this week, you get The Very Worst of Manon Rheaume in the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame.

There are also two new articles from the San Mateo Times about the San Francisco Seals’ home opener, which took place in November (huh?) of 1961, along with a print out of the roster which was expected to suit up that night.  The second article describes the game itself, which the Seals lost 8-3 to the Edmonton Flyers.  In a way, it was a chilling omen of things to come.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone!

Woohoo! It’s my last day at work before my holidays!  Two weeks of sitting in the backyard with the cats, drinking coffee and beer, and catching up on my summer reading.  I haven’t had a long holiday since Christmas, so I’m definitely due. This last day has been one of the longest, and I’ve been struggling to keep my eyes open since about 9 o’clock this morning.  I always fear the last day before going on vacation, because my brain and body always buy a ticket out of town a day before I can officially do the same.  I yawn constantly, I search the office kitchenette for toothpicks to hold my eyelids up, and I have absolutely no interest in doing anything productive, but I have to make it seem like I’m really busy.

Anyway, on to more serious business. New to the site this week is a profile of Seals coach Fred Glover, and how the team showed so much improvement over the course of the 1968-69 season that the AHL legend garnered attention as the NHL’s coach of the year.  He would end up winning the award at the end of the season, but only unofficially (from The Hockey News) because the NHL hadn’t yet started handing out hardware for the league’s top bench boss.

The other new addition this week is a goofy-looking piece of cardboard featuring Luke Richardson and his award-winning science fair project.  You heard that correctly.  And if you didn’t, you must be new to this site, because if you are a regular, you really can’t be shocked anymore by any cards I present you.  At this point, you have literally seen it all.

Since I will be on holidays with the wife and kid next week, no updates next week, I’m afraid, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come back and revisit some of your old favourites, like Rogie Vachon’s hairy chest, Crayola Fun Time with preschoolers, Rene Corbet staring down the blade of a hockey stick, that chicken always looking for a fight, Mike Grier wishing he was back in college, and trying to guess why Ted Bulley’s face looks like a rat exploded.

You can also visit the survey section to place your vote on which Seals uniforms you think were the sharpest from the 1961-1970 era. In a few weeks, the next group of uniforms will be announced, and the winners of each group will face off so we can find out which Seals/Barons uniform was the best.

Until next time, stay gold!

Welcome back to Golden Seals Hockey, the only place on the World Wide Web where you can celebrate the complete history of the California Seals and Cleveland Barons!

We have some great new additions for you this week.  The first is a brand new section where I invite you to give your opinion on all matters concerning the Seals and Barons.  In this week’s survey, I am posting the first two brackets of our new Seals/Barons Uniform Playoff, where I intend to find out which of the franchise’s uniforms was the best.  Even though the team only existed for seventeen years, there were a TON of different uniforms designed over that span, some of which were fantastic, while others were… well, let’s just say we probably won’t be seeing them at any heritage nights in the near future due to the fact using certain bright colours nowadays is probably considered some sort of pollution that even Donald Trump would be willing to spend money eradicating.

The other new addition is a wonderfully stupid card from the 1990-91 Score set, featuring the 1990 Memorial Cup Champion Oshawa Generals and their very special, usually-unseen, uh… teammate? Road-trip distraction? Paper weight? I think you’ll have to check out the silliness for yourself to figure it out.

Until next time, stay gold!

Welcome back everyone!  These posts are really starting to get difficult to write.  Man, is summer ever boring if you’re a hockey fan.  Hell, if you’re a SPORTS fan, it’s pretty damn boring.  Even if you like baseball, chances are your team is already out of the running for a playoff spot already.  If you’re a Blue Jays fan like me, that means you’ve been on neutral since about April.  There’s just nothing to talk about during the summer.  All they talk about on sports radio is tennis and golf, and I really couldn’t care less about either.  The UFC has gone down the toilet since GSP retired and Anderson Silva’s leg turned to Jell-O (if you saw “that” fight, you know what I mean).  Belts change hands every two weeks now, but just a few years ago, those things were practically welded to the waists of guys like them.  At least Jon Jones is back to bring back some form of legitimacy to the titles, and Cris Cyborg looks dominant too.  Anyway, I digress… Once NHL free agency season passes by, and the entry draft is nothing but a memory, the summer just drags on until about mid-September when we start hearing about training camps again.  And then October hits and we get the World Series, a new NBA season, and a new hockey season, and Sportscentre becomes must-see TV again.

Hey, how about that, I actually wrote a whole eight lines about how I had nothing to talk about.  Stay tuned for the exciting sequel to my lament next week!

This week, however, we present to you an interesting piece from February 1975, where Seals fans expressed their opinions on everything from what the Seals meant to them, how they felt about Marshall Johnston’s dismissal, how much Clarence Campbell didn’t give a damn about the Bay Area, and how bright the future seemed in Oakland. This week’s article is really an editorial from the Hayward Daily Review, and it will give you the opportunity to see the full scale of emotions that permeated among Seals fans during their “orphan” season when the NHL had possession of the team, and had really no idea what to do with it except wish for it to die.  Luckily, along came Mel Swig, and all was well, at least for another year or so.

The other new addition this week is a bizarre hockey card featuring Hall-of-Famer Denis Savard, during his not-so-memorable tenure with the Montreal Canadiens.  Luckily, Denis had his horses to pick him up when he was feeling down.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone!  It’s now been one year since Golden Seals Hockey was launched, and to celebrate this momentous event, we have added many new goodies, the most important of which is the official induction of Gary Smith, Reggie Leach, and Bob Stewart to the franchise’s Hall of Fame.  Head on over to the Hall of Fame section to read up on the three newest inductees.

Another fun new addition is the Ultimate Seals Quiz, which is sure to challenge even the team’s most devout fans: 25 questions that cover the franchise’s entire history, from its very first years in San Francisco, to the Charlie Finley era, all the way to the Cleveland Barons years.  Find out if you are a quiz all-star or a quiz chump by clicking the link here.

Finally, a new card has also been added to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame, and it is a fitting one because it is of the Seals’ all-time greatest player, Gilles Meloche.

Now that my book, and its index are finally, FINALLY and officially finished and submitted for printing, I will have more time to dedicate to this site, and there are a couple of really cool things that will be added in the next few weeks: new photos, personal correspondences with former players, new inductions to the Hockey Hall of Shame, as well as the usual articles and hockey card tragedies you’ve all become accustomed to seeing here, so I don’t need to tell you that you need to come back again!

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone!  After a one-week hiatus, we’re back!  I’ve finally had the chance to finish the final edit and index for my upcoming book, and while it feels like another chapter of my life has just ended, I’m also glad it’s over.  Creating an index has to be the worst part of writing a book, and it’s the very last thing you will remember adding to your project, which makes it even worse, because indexing is mind-numbing, and creating a book should be fun and interesting.  Creating an index is tedious, meticulous, soul-crushing paperwork.  Writing down the name of every single person who appears in the book, and writing down every single page something interesting is mentioned about that person is God-awfully boring, and every time you think to yourself, “Oh, I think I can get through this many pages today”, you always end up doing far less, and it gets depressing and stressful.  Thank God it’s all over and done with, aside from the inevitable last review which I’ll probably end up doing in a few weeks.  Tonight, I can take a night off and watch some Mystery Science Theater 3000, have a beer, and eat some nachos.  But before I do that, there’s important business to take care of… the Seals Hall of Fame inductions!

Without further ado, the three newest members of the Seals Hall of Fame, as voted by you, are Gary Smith, Reggie Leach, and Bob Stewart!  Thanks to everyone who voted.  In the coming months, there will be a new survey to choose the inductees for 2018.  Next week will be the one-year anniversary of the site so there will be a few fun new additions to the site, as well as the usual additions you’ve become accustomed to seeing around here.

New this week, I present you an article from February 1973 describing what must have been a very typical post-game situation for Fred Glover: considering whether or not he would off himself or simply medicate himself to the point where he wouldn’t feel anymore pain.  I’m serious.  Take a look over in the articles section to find out for yourself.

This week’s other new addition is a Brad Park card from the legendary 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee set, where he attempts to take the worst slap shot in visually-recorded memory,  Or maybe he’s practicing his putts.  Whatever he’s doing, it’s weird.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! Welcome back once again for another installment of hockey insanity courtesy of Golden Seals Hockey.

In the articles section this week, a brand new piece about the Seals’ last NHL game in which hotshot rookie Dennis Maruk scored two goals to dust off the L.A. Kings.  Speaking of Dennis Maruk, he has written a new book about his life with the help of Rogers Sportsnet’s Ken Reid.  You can check out some of the details over at Amazon.  Ken wrote one of the blurbs for my own book (also available on Amazon, by the way), and he was nice enough to write two of them, so I could choose which one I liked best.  His first book, Hockey Card Stories is a must-read for anyone who not only enjoys Overexposed, but who also likes actual research to go along with the card analysis.  As I’m writing this I’m about half-way through Ken’s latest book, One Night Only, which is about some of the players who only got to play in one career NHL game.  It’s a very interesting read full of stories and anecdotes you have never heard of from little-known players who have led truly fascinating lives and rubbed elbows with hockey’s elite.  As for Dennis Maruk, I have a personal connection with him as well.  He was one of the first players to agree to be interviewed for my book, way back in 2009 (yeah, it took me that long to finish this thing) and he was by far the biggest star player I got to speak to, so that was a big boost to my confidence as a first-time writer when he took the time to write me back.

Also new this week, the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame features a bizarre entry from the wonderfully weird 1991-92 Ultimate Draft set.  Minor-league tough guy Kerry Toporowski gets the treatment this week, not that this card is at all his fault, as is usually the case when it comes to these cardboard crap-a-thons.

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the small update this week, but this weekend is promising to be quite hectic, what with Canada Day and all, family coming over to visit, and me still in the middle of the final revision of my soon-to-be-published book, but hey, something is better than nothing, right?  Besides, most of you who live in Canada will probably be glued to your TVs watching Free Agent Sweepstakes Day.  Who will be this year’s David Clarkson, and clog up one unlucky team’s budget for the next eight years like an accumulation of Big Mac and poutine fat in the arteries?  Only time will tell.

So first off, we have a brand new induction to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame. This week, we are featuring Vancouver’s Dave Balon in another of O-Pee-Chee’s famed cut-and-paste jobs.  I absolutely love this card, and I absolutely love the 1971-72 set due to the many goofy-looking photos it features. Cards just aren’t this fantastic anymore.  They may have all this fancy gold and silver foil lettering and glossiness, but the cards from the post-expansion era of the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s were just wonderful for many reasons.

The other new addition this week is a short article about the rumour the Cleveland Barons were moving to Houston, Texas as part of the merger that was then being discussed by the NHL and WHA.  As you know, the merger did not happen until 1979, a year after the Barons and Aeros both folded.  Interestingly enough, within weeks, the Barons did in fact discuss merging with another club, but it was Minnesota, not Houston.  Who knows how the hockey landscape would have changed had the Barons and Aeros merged leaving the North Stars to hang in the balance.  Perhaps Houston would still have a NHL team to this day, and perhaps it would have been the Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars who would have been contracted?

Don’t forget that voting for the Seals Hall of Fame is drawing to a close soon.  So far, there are three clear-cut favorites for induction, but I’m not saying who they are.  You’ll just have to vote for your favourites and hope for the best.  The inductees will be announced the week of the site’s one-year anniversary at the end of July.  Until next time, stay gold, and have a safe and happy Canada Day!