Nitzy's Hockey Den

In addition to the 1957 NHL board game I picked up at the flea market last weekend , I grabbed this beauty. It's a 1970 game from 3M Sports called Blue Line Hockey.  The back of the box replicates the cool front imagery, the inside of the box displays the many aspects of hockey that are not necessarily conveyed in this game. The game itself seems to have not evolved much from the 1957 issue I posted last week. If anything, the quality of the game has DE-volved, as the 1957 game had some fantastic graphics on the game pieces.  The game pieces in 1970's Blue Line Hockey shown below are, I suppose more durable than the 1957 cardboard punch-outs, but they are not even close to as appealing a design. Again, we see the eye-boggling giant checkerboard hockey rink. Truly a sight for sore eyes. The one thing they did nail is the nicely embossed texture to the back of the game board itself. The rules are on the inside of the game box. If you feel like trying to ...

 Here's a fun thing I like to do every once in a while, assemble a squad of players who played for two distinct franchises. I did it for Leafs/Wings when they played in the Winter Classic a few years back. Also, I'm working on a squad of guys who played for both the Canucks and Leafs that includes such names as Vaive, Benning, Butcher and Kurtenbach. What follows is the all-time team of players who at some point in their careers, suited up for both of the 2019 Stanley Cup Finalists Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues. The fact that goaltender Hannu Toivonen is pictured at the top may seem a strange selection, but he is  the only retired player to play his entire career ONLY for Boston and St. Louis. Currently playing, David Backes has done the same, playing for only St.Louis and Boston. Toivonen came up with the Bruins in 2005/06 playing behind Tim Thomas and Andrew Raycroft, during the summer of 2007 he was dealt to the Blues for Carl Soderberg. He would back-up Manny Legace...

Check out this gem that I picked up at the flea market this past weekend. It was prominently displayed by my regular dealer who has a permanent set-up at the Vancouver Flea Market. It's one of those items that the second I saw it, I knew I would be walking away with it. I've never seen it before, but what a beauty. This board game was issued in 1957 by Copp Clark Publishing Company of Canada as a fully licensed game from the NHL. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens and their logos are wonderfully displayed on the game box lid. The company, Copp Clark can trace it's roots back to 1841 and still exists today solely as a book publisher. Perhaps their most well-known board game was Rummoli, which they created in 1940. The back of the game board has more great graphics as well as a textured "gator skin" finish. Manufacturers sure put a lot of quality and care into their products in the 1950's. Upon opening the three-panelled game board, the player...

Ricky Vaive, Incredulous in the Penalty Box The other night, after the late NHL playoff game finished I instinctively changed the channel to TSN/ESPN Classic just to see what was on. Any thoughts of a regular bedtime for me were instantly ruined. Airing on the retro sports channel was a 1978 World Junior Hockey Championship game between Canada and Sweden originally played January 1, 1978. This game, at the Montreal Forum featured a 16-year old Wayne Gretzky (among many other future NHL stars). Boxscore of the game is below. This game amounted to a semi-final match to determine who would play the winner of the Soviets and Czechs (Soviets won handily). All Canada needed was a tie against the Swedes and they would move onto the Championship game. Alas, Sweden bested Canada 6-5 on the strength of four power play markers. Canada had to make do with the Bronze medal while Gretzky was named Top Forward and topped the tourney with 17 points in 6 games, 7 more than his next teammate Wayn...

Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Curtis McElhinney started his first career NHL playoff game at the age of 35 years, 343 days. He is now the oldest goalie to make his playoff debut in NHL history. The two previous oldest were Les Binkley of the 1969/70 Pittsburgh Penguins and Ross Brooks of the 1972/73 Boston Bruins; each were over 35 years old, but younger than McElhinney. With 219 career games before a playoff start, McElhinney had played more career regular season games than Binkley and Brooks combined. By the 1970 playoffs Binkley had played 131 regular season matches for the Pens after over 600 starts in the minors. Binkley would win five of seven playoff games in 1970 with a 2.10 GAA in his only NHL playoff appearances. He played a total of ten additional playoff games with the Ottawa Nationals/Toronto Toros franchise of the WHA before retiring from professional hockey in in 1976 at the age of 41. Ross Brooks had posted a record of 11-1-3 for the Bruins in his rookie sea...

Colorado Avalanche defenceman, Cale Makar made NHL history in the first round of the 2019 playoffs by scoring a goal in his NHL debut that was also a playoff game. He is only the seventh player to ever do this. It's a fairly eclectic list with really only one guy (Brind'Amour) who became star in the league. I was interested in finding out about the very first player to have his debut in a playoff game and score a goal, a guy I had never heard of, Eddie Emberg. A look at the statistical record of Eddie Emberg shows his only NHL games took place in the 1944/45 post-season. He played two games for the Canadiens scoring his one and only goal in his debut match, the question is which game was actually his first? A check of NHL.com's boxscore records determines Emberg's first game was March 29, 1945 in the first round against Toronto. This was the fifth game of the series that the Leafs were ahead three games to one, but game five belonged to the Habs. Montreal kept...

Above is a rare appearance on the cover of a hockey magazine (or magazine of any kind for that matter) of one Dave "Tiger" Williams. The publication is Action Sports Hockey from November 1978. Williams was beginning he fifth NHL season, having just compiled the top Penalty Minute season of his career with 351 total. Along with all the PIM's, Tiger posted 19 goals and 50 points as the heart and soul of the late 1970's Maple Leafs. Williams had topped the NHL in PIM in 76/77 and would again the season he made cover boy of this magazine, but even though he had his career best total the year prior, he was bested by Philly's Dave Schulz who collected 405 minutes to Williams 351. The November 1974 Hockey World magazine below features a nice early photo of future Leaf captain Darryl Sittler. Entering his fifth season in the NHL, Sittler had topped the Maple Leafs in points the previous two seasons with 77 and 84 points respectively. In 1973/74 Sittler managed to ...