The California Golden Seals

Hockey has had its share of bizarre tales over the years, but none compares to the fascinating story of the California Golden Seals, a team that remains the benchmark for how not to run a sports franchise. From 1967 to 1978, a revolving door of players, apathetic owners, and ridiculous marketing decisions turned the Seals, originally based in Oakland, into hockey's traveling circus. The team lost tons of money and games, cheated death more often than Evel Knievel, and left behind a long trail of broken dreams. Live seals were used as mascots, players wore skates that were painted white on an almost-daily basis, and draft picks were dealt away nonchalantly like cards at a poker game. One general manager was hauled in for questioning by mysterious men because he'd mismanaged a player contract, while one of the team's goaltenders regularly spat tobacco juice at the feet of referees. The California Golden Seals examines the franchise's entire mismanaged--but always interesting--history, from its ballyhooed beginnings as a minor-league champion in the 1960s to its steep slide into oblivion in the late 1970s after moving to Cleveland. Through a comprehensive season-by-season narrative and a section of definitive statistics, Currier brings to life the Seals' entire history with lighthearted anecdotes, personal interviews, and statistics about hockey's most infamous losing team.

The saga of the Oakland/California Seals nine-year journey through the NHL is a strange, funny and sad tale that is nearly forgotten and has never been told...until now. Off the ice, the history of the Seals is practically a tale of how not to run a franchise. The team joined the NHL in 1967 as part of the "Second Six" expansion teams and stayed in Oakland until moving to Cleveland in 1976. The Seals had seven different ownership groups in nine years and chaos reigned throughout the process. This book shows you the inner workings of a hockey club that was always on the brink of bankruptcy and/or relocating and takes you behind the scenes of many of the mistakes made by NHL owners and executives during the early years of expansion. It also chronicles the crazy days of ownership by Charlie Finley, a man who admittedly knew nothing about hockey but knew he wanted to run his team his way. Hilarity and disaster resulted. On the ice, the Seals met with little success but were never dull. In nine years, the team had to put up with white skates, few fans and a cast of characters that were unique This book allows the players and coaches to tell their own story. More than 110 interviews were conducted with former Seals players, owners, coaches and employees to get a clear picture of what it was like to play in the NHL in the 60s and 70s. The rise of the WHA, continuing expansion and more hilarious stories of what really happens to an NHL team on the road and in the locker room. Hockey fans will love this true tale of the Seals.hockey's most colorful team.

The Cleveland Barons should never have existed. Born when the National Hockey League's California Golden Seals--another team that should never have existed--were transplanted to Cleveland in 1976 and greeted with apathy by the dwindling number of hockey fans in northeastern Ohio, the Barons were an embarrassment to the city and to the NHL. The only thing the team had going for them was the state-of-the-art arena they played in, which was all but empty for nearly every game they played. This book chronicles the Barons' two regrettable seasons--a case study in what happens when an ill-conceived professional sports team created in an expansion splurge is moved, in an effort to save it, to a city that doesn't really want it.

This is the story of Kansas City’s attempt to integrate major-league hockey into its sports marketplace, only to see it fall through thin ice. Troy Treasure, an award-winning sports reporter, tells the riveting story of the Kansas City Scouts, who began playing in the National Hockey League in 1974. Perhaps the franchise’s owners should have guessed it would be a struggle from the beginning: After finally getting an arena, its original name—the Mo-Hawks—was rejected because the Chicago Blackhawks thought it too closely resembled their moniker. But while the franchise underperformed on the ice and at the box office, there was also triumphs and plenty of laughs mixed in with the tears. During their two years on the ice, the Scouts featured the biggest on-ice badass in the NHL, a combustible coach, and one of hockey’s all-time funny men. Filled with player interviews and painstakingly researched, this book pays tribute to the history of professional hockey in Kansas City, the city’s other pro sports teams, and athletics at large.

An in-depth look into the origins of how each NHL team was named, received their logo and design, with interviews by those responsible. Written by those most knowledgeable, you'll learn why every hockey team to every play in the National Hockey League looks the way it does. Nothing unites or divides a random assortment of strangers quite like the hockey team for which they cheer. The passion they hold within them for the New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Boston Bruins allows them to look past any differences which would have otherwise disrupted a perfectly fine Thanksgiving dinner and channels it into a powerful, shared admiration for their team. We decorate our lives with their logos, stock our wardrobe with their jerseys, and, in some cases, even tattoo our bodies with their iconography and colors. They’re so ingrained in our lives we don’t even think to ask ourselves why Los Angeles celebrates royalty; why Buffalo cheers for not one, but two massive cavalry swords; or why the Broadway Blueshirts named themselves for a law enforcement agency in Texas (or why they even wear blue shirts, for that matter). All that and more is explored in Fabric of the Game, authored by two of the sports world’s leading experts in team branding and design: Chris Creamer and Todd Radom. Tapping into their vast knowledge of the whys and hows, Creamer and Radom explore and share the origin stories behind these and more, talking directly to those involved in the decision processes and designs of the National Hockey League’s team names, logos, and uniforms, pouring through historical accounts to find and deliver the answers to these questions. Learn more about the historied Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks, as well as the lost but not forgotten Hartford Whalers and Quebec Nordiques, all the way to the lesser-known Kansas City Scouts and Philadelphia Quakers. Whichever team you pledge allegiance, Fabric of the Game covers them in-depth with research and knowledge for any hockey fan to enjoy.

Krazy George made the world stand up and cheer. His autobiography is the good-natured, factual, and humorous account of how he transformed himself from George Michael Henderson, a shy Clark Kent to Krazy George, the leather-lunged firebrand he is today. Armed with just his unamplified voice and his drum, he invented the most celebrated fan participation cheer in the world, The Wave, also known as La Mexican Ola. In the process he created a brand-new career as the world's only full-time, lifelong professional cheerleader. Twenty-five million people have allowed Krazy to lead them in stadium-wide roars of excitement. Over a hundred major and minor league teams have hired him, often for multi-year contracts - teams like the Kansas City Chiefs, the Minnesota Vikings, the Houston Oilers, the Oakland A's, the San Jose Earthquakes major league soccer, the British Columbia Lions - Canadian football, and the USA World Cup Soccer team At a time when fans were polite and sedate, Krazy George put the twelfth man on steroids. The NFL's 1989 Crowd Noise rule was aimed at shutting down both George and the crowd. Clearly they didn't succeed. Even today, you may not see George at your game but his manic presence is there. Sports' aficionados or anyone else desiring to learn more about this fascinating character and his unique forty-year career will delight in this wild and krrr-a-zzz-y guy's vivid anecdotes of the unanticipated, behind-the-scenes events, that enabled him to catapult himself into the mega-sports' entertainment business. And yes, he's Still Krazy After All These Cheers. "He (Krazy George) neither looks nor acts like a sultan of screams, a nabob of noise, a dealer of din, a pedlar of pandemonium. Even at low volume, though, his cracked, high pitched voice betrays him. He is indeed, a guy who has been heard to shriek for a living. A weekend wild man they call Krazy George." --- Larry Wood, Calgary Herald "Back in 1981, in the stands of the sold-out Oakland Coliseum, Krazy George Henderson had a vision. On this October afternoon, his beloved A's were in the playoffs against the Yankees, and he imagined the crowd rising in a giant unbroken wave of human energy. Krazy George invented The Wave. And in the process he changed the way people, from all over the world and from different walks of life, come together to cheer, express themselves, share their passion and create something bigger than themselves.That's why I believe The Wave is not only an extraordinary act, it is a great symbol of our human connectedness and interdependence and thus the perfect metaphor for the kind of leadership we need in our ever more interdependent world. With this book, Krazy George invites us to enter his world of Wave-making. He shares his formula by teaching us how inspiration gets people up out of their seats, contributing their full passion and energy, creating a competitive advantage - and having fun in the process. The 21st century demands that we all find the Krazy in us, and by reading his words, we can all come to appreciate why The Wave is a metaphor for what a diverse group of people can accomplish when they share passion, a vision and values." --- Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN - Author of "HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything" "If Larry of the Three Stooges were cloned with Harpo Marx and the result talked like Andy Devine chewing sand, one would have a close facsimile of Krazy George, the world's only professional wild and crr-azy guy." --- Peter B. Gallagher, St. Petersburg Times

A narrative history of the California Golden Seals, one of the worst but most noteworthy teams in pro hockey history.

A wildly evocative chronicle of the decade that changed hockey forever. "Lady Byng died in Boston" read a sign in the Garden arena in 1970, a cheery dismissal of the NHL trophy awarded the game's most gentlemanly player. A new age of hockey was dawning. For 30 years, hockey was an orderly and (relatively) well-behaved sport. There was one Commissioner, six teams and five colours--red, white, black, blue and yellow. Oh, and one nationality. Until 1967, every player, coach, referee and GM in the NHL had been a Canadian. And then came NHL expansion, the founding of the WHA, and garish new uniforms. The Seventies had arrived: the era that gave us not only disco, polyester suits, lava lamps and mullets but also the movie Slap Shot and the arrest of ten NHL players for on-ice mayhem. But it also gave us hockey's greatest encounter (the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit), its most splendid team, the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens, and the most aesthetically satisfying game--the three-all tie on New Year's Eve, 1975, between the Canadiens and the Soviet Red Army. Modern hockey was born in the sport's wild, sensational, sometimes ugly Seventies growth spurt. The forces at play in the decade's battle for hockey supremacy--dazzling speed vs. brute force--are now, for better or worse, part of hockey's DNA. This book is a welcome reappraisal of the ten years that changed how the sport was played and experienced. Informed by first-hand interviews with players and game officials, and sprinkled with sidebars on the art and artifacts that defined Seventies hockey, the book brings dramatically alive hockey's most eventful, exciting decade.