Toronto at Kansas City, Nov. 7, 1975


The lowly Kansas City Scouts hosted the slightly less lowly Maple Leafs on this Friday night in 1975. The Scouts were one year removed from their awful expansion season when they posted 41 points over 80 games. Toronto would have an 83 point season in 75/76, beat Pittsburgh in the best-of-three preliminary round before falling to the Flyers in seven. The Leafs had not won a seven game series since capturing the Stanley Cup ten seasons before.

Kansas City could only dream of that kind of "success". By earning a tie with the visiting Leafs in this game the Scouts held a 4-7-2 record. That was pretty much the high point of their season.
Their second year of existence would prove worse than their first as they won only 12 games and collected 36 points. When the next season began they were located in Denver, Colorado and renamed the Rockies.
By the time Toronto would make their final visit ever to K.C. on January 15, 1976 the Scouts were a rudderless ship. The Leafs 6-4 victory dropped the Scouts to 11-29-4. They managed to win one more game for the rest of the entire season. In fact, from December 30 onward they had an almost laughable record of 1-34-8. ONE win, thirty-four losses, eight ties. Wow. Coach Bep Guidolin was fired two days after the final Leaf visit and General Manager Sid Abel lost three games in the interim. Eddie Bush finished out the campaign with the Scouts winning one of his 32 games at the helm. His 1-23-8 record for a .156 winning percentage is the sixth worst of all-time among guys who coached at least 20 games. (Yes, five others were worse).

Boxscore from the epic battle on the date this program was issued is below. Note that "Old Egg-in-Pockets" Inge Hammarstrom and Darryl Sittler both tallied their seventh goals of the young season. Of course, Sittler would finish with 41 goals, Hammarstrom 19.

November 7, 1975
Toronto 3, Kansas City 3
First Period
1. KC Bergman 1 (Murray, Gagnon) 4:55
2. TOR Sittler 7 12:25
3. KC Charron 5 (Paiement, Bergman) 17:06
Second Period
No Scoring
Third Period
4. TOR Hammarstrom 7 (Ashby, Williams) 1:59
5. KC Harvey 2 (Rota, Gilbert) 2:37
6. TOR Weir 5 (MacDonald, Thompson) 7:44
Shots On Goal
Toronto 12 12 12 - 36
KC        13  8  13 - 34
Goalies- TOR Thomas, KC Herron

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