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Entries with the tag: California+Golden+Seals
Remembering Charley Finley’s Hockey Team
by Paul on 08/15/10 at 08:26 AM ET
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from Rich Chere of the Star-Ledger,
Imagine if Charlie Finley were still around.
It is 40 years since Finley, then owner of baseball’s Oakland A’s, bought the NHL’s Oakland Seals and changed the team’s name to the California Golden Seals two games into the 1970-71 season.
He also made his players wear white skates, colorful uniforms and wanted to introduce an orange puck. The league rejected his puck idea.
The Seals were the first NHL team to put players’ names on the back of their jerseys.
“Charlie was a legendary guy, without a doubt,” recalled former Devils director of player personnel Bert Marshall, who played for the Seals. “I never had a problem with him. Maybe we just didn’t know.
“We were the outcasts, the bottom feeders. We were the black sheep of the whole league at the time, dressed up in Kelly green and whatever that yellow was called. Gold or whatever he called it. He was quite a guy. We didn’t see that much of him, but we sure felt his presence all the time.”
Filed in: NHL Teams | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: California+Golden+Seals,
Murray Remembers The Golden Seals
by Paul on 10/15/08 at 10:42 PM ET
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from Helene Elliott of the LA Times,
(Terry) Murray was drafted in 1970 by the late, lamented Golden Seals, who were part of the NHL’s 1967 expansion. Their initial name was the Oakland Seals, but they became the California Golden Seals in 1970-71 after Charles Finley bought them. Finley also designed the then-radical uniforms in what he called kelly green, California gold and polar bear white….
Murray said that somewhere in the attic of his family home in Canada he still has a pair of the white skates the Seals were required to wear. And he revealed a secret: the boots weren’t white—they were black but were covered with white shoe polish.
“They got pretty heavy by the end of the season because there were so many coats of shoe polish on them,” he said.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Los Angeles Kings | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: California+Golden+Seals,
