Nitzy's Hockey Den

My photojournalist buddy, Doug Petepiece has shared some great photos he took of a Maple Leafs/ Canadiens game in the 1970s. He didn't give me the date of the game, but a little bit of digging solved that issue.  First of all, the game is obviously in Montreal at the Forum and a rookie Mike Palmateer is in Toronto's net. This means the game is from 1976/77 and is one of two games. The Leafs played three times in Montreal that year, but Palmateer wasn't called up the first time they met at the Forum, and Wayne Thomas played on Oct. 21, 1976 and took the 5-2 loss. The other two games the Leafs played in Montreal, Palmateer did play. Nov. 21, 1976, the rookie got roughed up in a 9-5 Montreal win, and March 30, 1977 they played to a 3-3 draw. There is one player in the top photo that nails down this game as the March tie, Toronto #4 Tracy Pratt. Pictured at the right of the photo (alongside the obvious Shutt, Salming and Palmateer) is Pratt, the only player to wear #4 ...

Fifty years ago, Montreal Gazette columnist Pat Curran selected his mid-season All-Star team for the 1966/67 season. Curran described the factors that went into his All-Stars,"Points production was broken down as much as possible to consider winning or tying goals and assists plus consistent performances during the half schedule. Defensive play was also a major factor." Among the obvious choices like Mikita, Pilote and Howell, Curran selected under-rated Don Marshall as his 1st Team LW over Bobby Hull and Rod Gilbert at RW over Gordie Howe. Curran valued Marshall's all around game over Hull and he was only four goals in arrears of the perennial sniper. Gilbert's choice over Howe was perhaps less surprising as he had led the league with 20 goals, 7 ahead of Howe. Less respect was given to rookie Bobby Orr, who at the halfway mark had 7 goals and 18 points, only 6 and 4 points behind veterans Pilote and Howell. Curran chose Tim Horton and Terry Harper for his...

Here's a colourful photo from my pal at Vintage Sports Images in North Vancouver. The info that came with it was simply that it was Gretzky and Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy was Captain of the Canucks from 1979/80 through 1981/82. This photo has to be from 81/82 because the Oilers switched to white letters on their nameplate after having orange letters until 1980/81. This being 1981/82 gives two possibilities as to who Vancouver #17 in the foreground is. Jerry Butler wore the number for 25 games this year as he split time between Vancouver and Dallas of the CHL. On March 9, 1982 the Canucks acquired Tony Currie along with Rick Heinz and Jim Nill from St. Louis for a 4th round pick. Both Butler and Currie are right shooters like the guy in this pic, but Edmonton had already visited Vancouver for the last time of the season six weeks prior to Currie being traded for. This means the #17 shown here can only be Jerry Butler. Butler was obtained two years before along with Tiger Willia...

Here's another fantastic hockey photo from  vintagesportsimages.com . It came to me with no date but three of the guys labelled, Red Kelly, Ted Kennedy and Harry Lumley. These are all easily identified by most hockey history buffs, as is the second Maple Leaf in the photo as Sid Smith. A couple other things are quickly noticed, the referee in the background is clearly "King" Clancy and the game is taking place at Detroit's Olympia Stadium. A few other details allow us to narrow this down to the exact game this was from. Firstly, Harry Lumley was Detroit's goalie through 1949/50 (when he helped Detroit win the Cup) until the arrival of Terry Sawchuk the following year. Red Kelly began with the WIngs in 47/48 and "Teeder" Kennedy was certainly active over these seasons. However, Sid Smith wearing a number ending in "4" definitely helps narrow down the timeframe here. Smith had been with the Leafs for parts of the 46/47 and 47/48 campai...

35 years ago today, Wayne Gretzky erupted for the greatest stretch of scoring in his career. Going into a game against Minnesota on December 19, 1981, The Great One was comfortably in the lead in NHL scoring with a line of 35 goals, 48 assists, 83 points through 34 games. The hockey world was abuzz with the possibility of him scoring 50 goals in 50 games...or better. The scoring leaders at this point were as follows: (G-A-Pts) Gretzky  35-48-83 PStastny 21-39-60 DTaylor  18-35-53 Dionne   23-29-52 BSmith   20-32-51 Savard    15-35-50 Bossy     23-26-49 Gretzky had a nice 23 point lead on second place Peter Stastny, that would be padded further during a 9-6 home victory over the North Stars. Gretzky notched 3 goals and 4 helpers to take him to 38 goals in 35 games. The following night, Calgary came to town and the Oilers lost 7-5, Gretzky scored only 2 goals and an assist. On December 23, Edmonton hosted Vancouver and prevailed 6-1...

Time to identify another old hockey photo for my pal at vintagesportsimages.com in North Vancouver. This one came to me as is, with no information whatsoever. Luckily this one is fairly easy to narrow down to a specific season. The Vancouver Canucks began play in the NHL in the 1970/71 season, this also was the last NHL season (for a while) of Gordie Howe. Gordie is seen in the middle of this melee, so the photo is from the 1970/71 campaign. The game was obviously in Detroit, what with the Wings logo on the ice at the right side of the photo. Another way to help pinpoint an old Canuck photo is looking for the "V" on the sleeve stripe. Thanks to the great site nhluniforms.com we learn that Vancouver had this style of jersey for only their first two seasons of existence. Below is a closeup of one of the Canucks in the photo. Using the  sihrhockey.org database, it's easy to identify most of the players in the pic as follows; Detroit #15 Rene Leclerc, #12 Tom Miller...

A good friend of mine has just opened a vintage sports image shop here in North Vancouver, conveniently named  Vintage Sports Images . He has literally thousands of original, never-seen photographic negatives from all sports. He prints them on canvas and they look so good, most of them appear to be paintings. Naturally, I am lending my expertise at identifying players and events in any photos of his that have missing pieces of info.  The first one I'm looking at is a really cool shot of what appears to be an old Boston Bruin from the 1930's. He has no other information on it than that. Firstly, a closer look shows a patch on the player's left shoulder that says "Cubs". The Boston Cubs did indeed play from 1930 to 1936 in the Canadian-American Hockey League. The CAHL was a minor league that begat the International-American Hockey League in 1936 and would become today's American Hockey League in 1940. A look at the Society for International Hockey Researc...