Before the sharks, there were Golden Seals
With the NHL season well under way I thought, what the heck, I’d
crank out a column on America’s coolest sport. For our readership
that more likely than not means a nifty little piece on the San
Jose Sharks and the goings on in the Western Conference’s Pacific
Division.
That all sounds swell but since I haven’t really followed the
NHL with a fevered frenzy since the days of period breaks with
cartoon character Peter Puck on Boston’s WSBK TV 38
– you know back in the days when guys like Bobby Orr, Phil
Esposito and Terry O’Reilly played – I thought I’d write about a
memorable incident that happened on the ice some 20-plus years
ago.
Before the sharks, there were Golden Seals
With the NHL season well under way I thought, what the heck, I’d crank out a column on America’s coolest sport. For our readership that more likely than not means a nifty little piece on the San Jose Sharks and the goings on in the Western Conference’s Pacific Division.
That all sounds swell but since I haven’t really followed the NHL with a fevered frenzy since the days of period breaks with cartoon character Peter Puck on Boston’s WSBK TV 38 – you know back in the days when guys like Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito and Terry O’Reilly played – I thought I’d write about a memorable incident that happened on the ice some 20-plus years ago.
What I’d rather talk about is a little episode that happened to me out here in sunny California about half a decade before the Sharks ever came to be. See that’s the time when the national league Hockey America (Don’t know if it even exists anymore) was first forming advanced, semi-pro teams out here. Being a long time right-winger on the ice (now only in the voting booth) I thought I’d give it a go. After all, I’m from Bean town and I can skate with the best of them, right? Heck, I played ice hockey my whole life. One of my uncles played hockey at Boston College in the 1960s and another used to give Bobby Orr golf lessons. It’s just in my blood, or at least it was back then.
I thought, ‘What do these Californians know about ice hockey,’ especially in the years that followed the California Golden Seals and before the Sharks came to be. I was right. What I was wrong about was that there were hardly any Californians on the team – these guys were hardcore hockey players from back east. Many of them had played on the powerhouse college hockey teams like B.C., Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, etc.
They were fresh out of college and out here in the high-tech capital of the world after accepting nice salaries to work in the computer industry. At least that was the story for most of them.
At the first team meeting, I thought I literally was back in Massachusetts. Half the team spoke like the people on Cheers or like “Southies.” Suddenly, I realized I would be forced to go up against guys that really, really took their hockey seriously and played much more than me – a guy who went as far as high school with it. In fact, years later a few of them would go on to try out for the first Sharks team. Surprisingly, I held my own enough to play right wing on the second line. I had the absolute worst slap shot on the team, decent speed and a pretty good wrist shot.
Enter the first game.
I’ll never forget it. All night I’m going up against this blond guy with an accent that had about 1 percent less speed than Wayne Gretzky, stickhandling skills like a magician, and a shot like a Howitzer, and stamina for days. The guy came off the ice only a handful of times, which is why yours truly got to face him.
During that game I kept thinking to myself, ‘What’s going on here? This guy is no different than the guys in the NHL, no exaggeration.’ He was just skating end to end burning through the lines and screaming past the defense before drilling shots into the top corner of the net. The other guys could play, but this guy was almost surreal. I deal with this ass-kicking clinic from the front row for three periods. After the game, I ask a teammate, “Who was that guy that was burning me all night?” His reply, “Oh he was on the Swedish Olympic team that won a Bronze Medal in 1984.”
Here I am working on a journalism degree at San Jose State with only some high school and oodles of pond hockey experience going up against a guy that stood on an Olympic podium. Who cares that it was on the bottom tier. This guy was an Olympian, who was out here on a work visa. And I’m chasing him around the skating rink at Vallco Village in Cupertino one fall evening in 1986. I don’t remember his name but I do remember the accent. For the record, I think I got about three shots off the entire game and broke him up maybe twice.
