California Seals
| California Golden Seals | |
|---|---|
 2024–25 California Seals season | |
| Conference | Western |
| Division | Pacific |
| Founded | 1967 |
| History | California Seals 1967-present (NHL) |
| Home arena | Oracle Arena |
| City | Oakland, California |
| Colors | Pacific teal, orange, white |
| Media | KTVU KZSN |
| Owner(s) | Bay Area Sports & Entertainment |
| General manager | Bill Torrey Jr. |
| Head coach | (Unknown) |
| Captain | (Unknown) |
| Minor league affiliates | (Unknown) |
| Stanley Cups | 0 |
| Conference championships | 0 |
| Division championships | 0 |
The California Seals are a professional ice hockey team based within Oakland, California. The Seals compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference, and are owned by Bay Area Sports & Entertainment. Beginning play within the 1967–68 season, the team has always played its home games at the Oracle Arena within downtown Oakland.
For most of its history, the Seals were the least successful of the teams added within the 1967 expansion, never earning a winning record and only making the playoffs twice in nine seasons of play, being further plagued by low attendance. However, after drafting Raleigh Taylor with their first overall pick under the 1996 NHL Entry Draft, the franchise started setting league-attendance records and made the playoffs every year since until 2019. They have advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals once, losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins within 2016. They have won the Presidents' Trophy once, as the team with the league's best regular season record in the 2008–09 season. They have also won six division titles as a member of the Pacific Division since 1993.
History[edit]
1960s[edit]
In 1966, the NHL announced that six expansion teams would be added as a new division for the 1967–68 season, officially because of a general desire to expand the league to new markets, but also to squelch the Western Hockey League's threat to turn into a major league. The San Francisco Seals were one such team from the WHL. The NHL awarded an expansion team to Barry Van Gerbig for the San Francisco Bay area. Van Gerbig decided to purchase the WHL club with the intent of bringing them into the NHL as an expansion team the following season.
Van Gerbig had planned to have the team play in a new arena in San Francisco, but the new arena was never built. He decided to move the team across the Bay from the Cow Palace in Daly City to Oakland to play in the new Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Arena. He renamed the club the California Seals. This was done in an attempt to appeal to fans from San Francisco, and to address complaints from the other NHL teams that Oakland was not considered a major league city and would not be a draw for fans.
A year later, Van Gerbig brought the Seals into the NHL as an expansion team. The team participated with the other five expansion teams in the 1967 NHL Expansion Draft; however, the terms imposed by the established Original Six teams were very one-sided in their favor. The existing NHL teams were permitted to protect nearly all of their best players, thus the players available for selection were mostly castoffs, aging players well past their prime and career minor leaguers. To bolster their roster and also to maintain a semblance of familiarity and continuity for existing Seals fans, the team retained a portion of the club's WHL roster such as Charlie Burns, George Swarbrick, Gerry Odrowski, Tom Thurlby, and Ron Harris.
The Bay Area was not considered a particularly lucrative hockey market; however, the terms of a new television agreement with CBS called for two of the expansion teams to be located in California and other than the Kings there were no other prospective franchise applicants of similar pedigree to the Seals. Nevertheless, while the WHL Seals had drawn well at the Cow Palace the team drew poorly in Oakland once they entered the NHL. The plan to bring fans in from San Francisco failed, and on November 6, 1967, Van Gerbig announced that the team's name would be changed to the Oakland Seals (although the league did not register the change until December 8 to focus more on the East Bay).
The Seals were never successful at the gate even after the name change, and because of this poor attendance Van Gerbig threatened on numerous occasions to move the team elsewhere. First-year coach and general manager Bert Olmstead publicly advocated a move to Vancouver, resulting in an offer from Labatt's brewery to purchase and relocate the team to the Canadian city as well as a proposal to move the team to Buffalo from the Knox brothers, who like Vancouver had been shut out of the 1967 expansion. The NHL, not wanting to endanger its TV deal with CBS, rejected both proposals. As a compromise, the NHL agreed to expand again in 1970, adding teams in both Vancouver and Buffalo. The Knoxes bought a minority share of the Seals in 1969, only to sell it a year later to fund the Sabres.
This, as well as the team's mediocre on-ice performance, led to major changes to both the Seals' front office and the roster – only 7 of the 20 Seals players remained after the first season. The new-look Seals were somewhat more successful. In their second season they improved to 69 points, which while still seven games below .500 was good enough for second place in the all-expansion West Division. The Seals were actually favored to win their first round playoff matchup against the Kings, but were upset in seven games. Oakland regressed to 58 points the following season, but still edged out Philadelphia for the final playoff spot on a tiebreaker. Their second playoff appearance was a brief one as they were swept by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Those were the only two years that the franchise made the playoffs.
The league's rejection of a proposed move to Vancouver prompted a lawsuit that was not settled until 1974 (San Francisco Seals Ltd. v. National Hockey League). The Seals organization filed suit against the NHL claiming that the prohibition violated the Sherman Act. The Seals asserted that the league's constitution was in violation by prohibiting clubs from relocating their operations, and that the relocation request was denied in an attempt to keep the San Francisco market in the NHL and thereby discourage the formation of a rival team or league in that location. The court ruled that the NHL was a single entity, and that the teams were not competitors in an economic sense, so the league restrictions on relocation were not a restraint of trade. For the 1969–70 season the team was sold to Trans-National Communications, whose investors included Pat Summerall and Whitey Ford. However, the group filed for bankruptcy after missing a payment and relinquished the team to Van Gerbig, who put the team back on the market.
1970s[edit]
Prior to the 1970–71 season, Charles O. Finley, the flamboyant and eccentric owner of baseball's Oakland Athletics, purchased the Seals. Finley and Roller Derby boss Jerry Seltzer had both put in bids on the team. Although Seltzer's offer was slightly better financed and included a more detailed plan for revival, a majority of NHL owners from the "old establishment" voted in favor of Finley. General manager Bill Torrey left by mid-season due to clashes with Finley.
Finley renamed the team the "Bay Area Seals" to begin the 1970–71 season. However, on October 16, 1970, just two games into the season, he changed the team name to the "California Golden Seals", following a number of other marketing gimmicks intended to promote the team to the fans, among them changing the Seals' colors to green and gold to match those of the popular A's. The team's uniform crest was now the word "Seals" in a unique typeface, but an alternate logo using a sketch based on a photo of star player Carol Vadnais was used on marketing materials such as pennants, stickers and team programs. The original 1967 California Seals logo recolored in green and gold was often seen on trading cards and other unofficial material, but was never adopted by the team. The Seals are remembered for wearing white skates, but initially Torrey convinced Finley to use green and gold painted skates instead, as team-colored skates were a trend of the period. However, this was all for naught, as the Seals finished with the worst record in the NHL that year. Other innovations that Finley's Seals incorporated, were the inclusion of player names on the back of the jerseys, which then set the precedent for today's 32 current NHL teams identifying players in the same fashion. Finley also was the first owner to allow players to fly first class on commercial flights to games, thus starting a trend that ultimately culminated in NHL teams regularly chartering aircraft by the 21st century. The Seals regularly used the new Boeing 747s the airlines had put into service at the time. Finley also introduced the flamboyant green and gold "Seals luggage" which all players and coaches were required to carry, to identify them as the northern California NHL team.
On 22 May 1970, the Seals traded their pick in the first round of the 1971 NHL Amateur Draft to the Montreal Canadiens along with Francois Lacombe in return for Montreal's first round pick in the 1970 draft (Seals selected Chris Oddleifson), Ernie Hicke, and cash. As a result of the Seals' dreadful season, the Canadiens had the top pick in the 1971 draft, and used it to select future Hall of Fame member Guy Lafleur. This transaction now ranks as one of the most one-sided deals in NHL history. The team rebounded in 1971–72, but the arrival of the World Hockey Association (WHA) wiped out most of those gains. Finley refused to match the WHA's contract offers, causing five of the team's top ten scorers from the previous season to bolt to the new league. Devoid of any defensive talent save for goaltender Gilles Meloche, the Seals sank into last place again in 1972–73, where they would remain for the rest of their history. Although divisional restructuring in 1974–75 included a revamped format in which three teams in each division made the playoffs, the team's efforts were frustrated by their placement in the Adams Division, with the strong Sabres, Boston Bruins, and Toronto Maple Leafs of the day. The Seals once again finished well out of playoff contention, and were notably the only team to lose at home to the expansion Washington Capitals.
Finley soon lost patience with his struggling hockey team, especially given the contrast to his World Series champion Athletics. He tried to sell the Seals, but when no credible buyers came forward who were interested in keeping the team in the Bay Area, he sold the team back to the league for $6.585 million. A 1973 attempt by Finley to sell the team to Indianapolis interests who planned to relocate the team to that city was rejected by the NHL's board of governors. In early 1975, newspapers reported that the Seals and Pittsburgh Penguins were to be relocated to Denver and Seattle, respectively, in an arrangement that would have seen the two teams sold to groups in those cities that had already been awarded "conditional" franchises for the 1976–77 season. At the same time, the league announced that if the Seals' sale to the Denver group was not completed or new ownership found locally, the franchise would be liquidated at the end of the season.
The Denver arrangement fell through, and the league ran the Seals for more than a year until a group headed by San Francisco hotel magnate Melvin Swig bought the team on 28 July 1975, with the intention of moving the team to a proposed new arena in San Francisco. The team fell just short of the playoffs, and after a mayoral election, plans for the new arena were cancelled. With a new arena out of the picture, the league dropped their objection to the relocation of the franchise. Although attendance was finally showing some improvement and the team playing better, minority owners George and Gordon Gund persuaded Swig to seek approval to move the team to their hometown of Cleveland. Although the league knew Cleveland was an stable market, already confirmed their plans to award an expansion franchise for the city.
The team had the league's worst record within the seasons between 1976–78 and 1987–88 seasons. With the team suffering financial problems, it seemed the Penguins would either fold or relocate if something wasn't done. Raleigh Taylor, one of the most highly touted NHL draft picks within its history, was due to be drafted inside the 1988 NHL Entry Draft. Heading towards the end of the season ahead of the Minnesota North Stars, who were placed last, the Seals made several questionable moves that appeared to weaken the team in the short term. They posted three six-game winless streaks in the last 21 games of the season and earned the right to draft Taylor amidst protests from North Stars' management. Seals head coach Lewis Arbott later admitted that a conscious decision was made to finish the season as the team with the worst record, saying in an interview with the California Heart that a mid-season lunch prompted that plan, because there was a high chance of the franchise folding if Taylor was not drafted. Other teams offered substantial trade packages for the draft choice, but the Penguins kept the pick and drafted Lemieux first overall.Taylor paid dividends right away, scoring on his first-ever shot of his first-ever NHL shift in his first NHL game. However, the team spent four more years out of the playoffs after his arrival.
Trivia[edit]
(TBA)
