Nitzy's Hockey Den

This past Saturday, Anaheim blitzed Chicago for three goals in a 37 second span. They however fell short of the playoff record held by the 1979 Toronto Maple Leafs. After an 81 point season, Toronto snuck out a 2-1 win over the 90 point Flames in Atlanta to start the playoffs. In the old best two of three Preliminary Round format, game two would be back in Toronto. To quote The Toronto Star, "In reality, the game was 23 seconds long. From 4:04 to 4:27 of the first period, the Leafs produced a record three goals, two by Darryl Sittler, one by Ron Ellis." Atlanta would make it 3-1 by the end of the first, but that's as close as they would get in a Toronto 7-4 win. The summary of the three record goals is below. Atlanta goalie Dan Bouchard was the victim of all seven goals over the first two periods before being replaced by Rejean Lemelin. It's interesting that the third Leaf marker was assisted on by defenceman Joel Quenneville who of course was behin...

My pal, Doug Petepiece has shared with me few more great photos of his as he continues combing through his personal archives. These two show the legendary Bobby Hull (pre-hair plugs) and his Winnipeg Jets playing the Toronto Toros in WHA pre-season action. The game took place at the Ottawa Civic Centre, I haven't been able to find a boxscore but from the players shown, it has to be before the 1973/74 season.  The first photo, above is a great one showing Hull and Toronto captain Wayne Carleton sprawled out on the ice battling for the puck. Jets defender Bob Woytowtich is at the right side. This was just prior to the second year of World Hockey Association play, Hull had scored 51 goals the previous year and would ripple the mesh 53 more times in the upcoming campaign. Carleton had scored 22 goals for Boston and 17 for California Golden Seals in the early 1970's. After jumping to the WHA he topped the Ottawa Nationals with 91 points in 1972/73, bef...

Orr being chased by Pierre Mondou in one of his final games ever. Above is another fantastic, never-before-seen photo from the files of my cyber-buddy Doug Petepiece. Doug has been a photojournalist for four decades based out of Eastern Ontario and has in the past shared some of his great shots with me. The photo is of all-time great, Bobby Orr while playing with the Chicago Blackhawks. The question is, which game is it from? Orr, while a member of the Hawks played Montreal in the regular season only twice and both times were in Chicago. Doug suggested it may have been from a pre-season match that took place in Ottawa (where he did a lot of his work). Sure enough, a search of google archives finds a game that fits the photo. On Sept 26, 1978 Montreal beat Chicago 4-2 at the Ottawa Civic Centre. Below I paraphrase an article from the Montreal Gazette dated Sept. 27, 1978. "It's coming better each day," Orr said, "I'm happy with it. I feel it's getting ...

I saw an interesting stat while watching the NHL playoffs the other day, Chicago's Patrick Kane had just surpassed the 100 career playoff game plateau and he was one of the few in NHL history to play that many games AND average at least a point per game. There are only twenty players that can make this claim, three of them are currently active (Crosby, Malkin the others). The list below includes most of the obvious names one would expect, and a few that may surprise.                                                               Player        GP Pts    Pts/GP-RegSeasonPts/GP Gretzky      208 382  1.84-1.92 Lemieux     107 172  1.61-1.88 Messier       236 295  1.25-1.07 Bossy          129 160  1.24-1.50 Crosby ...

Future Edmonton Oiler Connor McDavid is making quite a mockery of the Ontario Hockey League playoffs. His team Erie holds a two games to one lead over Sault Ste. Marie in the OHL Semifinals. McDavid has played 12 games and ripped 18 goals and 14 helpers for 32 total points. Crazy. He's eight points up on second place Nick Ritchie. Just how does this performance compare to previous top rated prospects since 1990? Let's have a look at what these 18 year old phenoms did in their final junior playoff year, including the Memorial Cup if applicable. Player, Team, Year GP-G-A-Pts Pts/Game Connor McDavid, Erie, 2015         12-18-14-32  2.67 Taylor Hall, Windsor, 2010            23-22-22-44  1.91 John Tavares, Oshawa, 2009          14-10-11-21  1.50 Patrick Kane, London, 2007           16-10-21-31  1.94 Rob Schremp, London 2006         ...

A few months back I posted my Johnny Bower version of this cool promo from Coca-Cola, I recently picked up the Dave Keon issue. Who better to teach kids "How To Play Forward (Defensive)".  A young Keon with Father Bauer of St. Mikes Keon taking the puck from, it looks like  Frank Mahovlich Pure hatred for the Habs Keon with his little pal, Red Kelly Keon and the Prime Minister

One of the newset additions to the Den is this wonderful item. A 1961/62 Maple Leafs coin set with the display shield. These were issued by Salada Foods in Shirriff potato chips and Salada tea, jelly, pie-filling, and pudding. 1961/62 is the only year the shields were available by order.  These shields are made of a flimsy plastic and are usually chipped along the edges like mine, if they survived at all. Check out the entire 20 coin set featuring everyone from Mahovlich and Keon to Larry Keenan and Johnny MacMillan. Below is an ad for the original coins and shields.