Hi everyone! It’s been an exciting few days at Steve’s house! I received a package today that really made my day.  A visitor to this site sent me a copy of my book asking me to autograph it for his father-in-law’s Christmas present.  I won’t give any information away to avoid spoiling the surprise, but the father-in-law in question is a former member of the California Golden Seals.  That was a fun surprise for me, but even better was the fact that this was the first actual copy of my book to fall into my hands.  It was a pretty exciting moment, to say the least, to finally see a finished version of my book after so many years of cobbling it together.  Other people have begun writing me to let me know they have received their gratis copies either as a thank you for writing blurbs for the back cover or for agreeing to interview me and/or review the book for their website or publication.

There’s also a special new edition of the Hockey News featuring the 50 greatest players from each NHL franchise.  The Seals also get a bit of coverage in the back pages of the magazine, but since the Seals and Barons only played 11 seasons, only the 10 greatest players in franchise history are listed:

1-Gilles Meloche

2-Carol Vadnais

3-Ted Hampson

4-Dennis Maruk

5-Bob Stewart

6-Al MacAdam

7-Bert Marshall

8-Joey Johnston

9-Gary Smith

10-Bill Hicke

What do you guys think?  Who would you put in the Seals’ all-time Top 10 list?

If you’re looking for new material this week, we’ve got you covered, as usual. New to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame is a spectacularly awful piece of cardboard featuring Calgary Flames legend Jarome Iginla.

In the articles section, we have a new newspaper clipping about the time Gilles Meloche was forced to miss several weeks of action after Reggie Leach accidentally skated over his exposed hand during practice.  For a guy who had already played two non-playoff seasons in Oakland, he was pleasantly optimistic about the Seals’ chances of making the playoffs.

Until next time, stay gold!

Hi everyone! With less than a month before my book, The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams hits the shelves of Amazon.com, I thought I’d share with you a few of the advanced reviews of my work.  Keep in mind that no matter how much these people’s writing styles are similar to mine, these are totally and seriously real people, and in no way a fabrication of a talented writer’s mind.

“This is literally the greatest piece of literature since William Shakespeare kicked the bucket!” – Oswald Riemenschneider of Humptulips, Washington

“The definitive history of the California Golden Seals and Cleveland Barons has FINALLY been written.  I can now die in piece!” – Jean-Guy Rubberboots of Screw Auger Falls, Maine

“Steve Currier has done a masterful job making the Seals’ history come to life.  This might be the greatest book… no, the greatest thing I have ever read.” – Merdive Cornichon of Big Warts, Saskatchewan

“All I can say is wow! No, let me rephrase that… WOW!! I thought Ken Dryden’s The Game was a great hockey book, but The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams blows it away like a paper airplane in a hurricane.  It is so amazing I want to have his babies.  Steve’s babies, not Ken’s.” – Allie Gator of Bald Knob, West Virginia

“I have no idea who Steve Currier is, to be quite honest.  I was on Amazon looking for books on Steph Curry, and this Golden Seals thing showed up.  I figured Golden Seals, Golden State, ah, close enough, so I picked it up, and dude I was flabbergasted!  This is the Steph Curry of hockey books, if that makes any sense.” Brownie McDoogal of Fishkill, New York

“Now that The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams has hit the shelves, I truly believe world peace is within our grasp.” – Harold Groinpull of Pratt’s Bottom, Alberta

“At 496 pages this is the perfect doorstop to keep my two-year-old from roaming out of his bedroom every morning.  Finally, I can sleep in!” – Rusty Nutz of Puddletown, New Brunswick

“I loved this book so much, I’m heading out to Canadian Tire right now to buy some latex house paint so I can paint my own skates white.” – Michael Sharts of Shagnasty Island, Ontario

“Carol Vadnais? Isn’t that a girl’s name? For that matter, how can Drew Barrymore and Drew Carey have the same first name.  That just doesn’t make any sense.” – Norrie McBurger of Rapture, Indiana

Hey, from comments like that, you know this must be good readin’! Head on over to Amazon right now to reserve your advanced copy before all those other losers (not you folks planning on buying my book, you guys are awesome, but those other losers) tie up their boot laces in the middle of cold, cold November and head out to Chapters or Smithbooks to pick up their bathroom reading material.

If you’re here for something other than totally, 100% real praise for my soon-to-be-published book, I suggest you head on over to the Overexposed wing of the Hockey Hall of Shame for a peak at a famous fashion faux-pas from 1971!  The victim this week is none other than NHL Hall-of-Famer Phil Esposito making us all wonder what the hell were we (well, you, probably, since I was born much later) thinking after all the acid from Woodstock wore off.

In other Seals news, the big event on October 23rd is still on as planned, but the players who have confirmed their presence are Joey Johnston, Wayne Carleton, Marv Edwards, and Wayne King.  If you are in the Greater Toronto Area on that day, stop on by and meet me, and our honoured guests from the Seals.  It’s going to be a fun night, so don’t be a stranger.

While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to this site.  It’s not much of a commitment, so why not take the risk.  You’ll get an e-mail with this kind of witty banter about once a week, and that’s it.  You can do what you want with the e-mail: read it, click the links, and, well that’s about it, I suppose.  You can subscribe by writing down your e-mail address in the box above, it’s that easy!

Until next time, stay gold!

 

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another week of Golden Seals Hockey!  Just a little over a month before the official launch of The California Golden Seals: a Tale of White Skates, Red Ink, and One of the NHL’s Most Outlandish Teams, and I can hardly wait.  I’m expecting to receive my first copies sometime in the next week or two so I’m looking forward to that.  I’ll be bringing a few dozen copies of my book to Seals/Barons Night in Toronto on October 23rd, so if you’re in town, stop by St. Mike’s College at 6:30pm for an evening of reminiscing with Seals players and fans.  Wayne King and Marv Edwards have just confirmed they would be coming, so more good news, folks.

Also be on the lookout for reviews of my book as I start my sort-of publicity tour.  Well, not so much a publicity tour, but rather me sitting at the kitchen table sending e-mails to my publisher asking them to send copies to people who have agreed to read my book.  If all goes well, you may see reviews in a few major newspapers and magazines (Hockey News, I’m looking at you… Call me!) Oh, that, and hopefully a few podcast interviews along the way too, which should be interesting since I have never been interviewed before, so it should be interesting… or a complete disaster that will be a permanent part of the fabric of the Internet for generations to come.  Keep your fingers crossed!

As far as new website material goes, I’ve re-upped my subscription with Newspapers.com so I’ll be looking for new articles that escaped my clutches during the research period of my book.  I’ve already found a couple of great articles, so you guys are in luck!  New to the site this week is an article about how the Seals had improved over the course of the 1975-76 season.  Lots of information about that season’s team awards too, which is indeed a tough area of Seals history to document due to the lack of publicity such things got during the team’s nine NHL seasons.

Finally, the other new addition to the site this week is a card that will frighten you to your very soul.  I’m serious!  Last week’s Emerson Etem crotch shot has nothing on this bad boy.  In fact, this card features the baddest boy of all, the Dark One himself!  I feel I may have gone too far with this one, and I debated long and hard whether or not I wanted to go in such a dark direction.  I almost want you to just click on some other site right now and get away from here just to save you from what lurks in the Overexposed wing this week, but you’re all adults and you have free will and stuff, so all I can say is you’ve been warned!  You have SOOOO been warned!

Until next time, stay gold!

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!