Remember them? Go way back Rusty, waaayyyyy back. They came into the league with the 1967 expansion. They were an NHL franchise that didn’t last. The west coast wasn’t ready for a team without some star power and Gretzky didn’t head to LA until 20 years later.
One of the great memories I have of these guys was the yellow leather in their skates….(or was it green?). From my shoe box of old hockey cards, I was surprised to find a whole bunch I had from the Seals. Here’s one with the “team leaders”. Sadly, I don’t know what year this was from.
For more details, check out this blog post from Shoebox Legends. As a bid of a sidebar to one of the cards shown on this Shoe Box Legends post, Joey Johnston was from Peterborough. I remember one day in the late winter after a snowfall the night before, an oil truck came down our street to fill up some houses. Because of the snow, it wasn’t able to get back up the street which had a bit of a hill. Didn’t bother the driver any – it was Jimmy Johnston, Joey’s brother and since we had a ball hockey game going on in the street, he jumped out of the truck and played with us until either the snow melted a bit or a tow truck came by, I can’t remember which. It was pretty cool – playing ball hockey with a real NHL’er’s brother!
Rink Tales 