Unidentified Hockey Photo; Canucks vs. Red Wings

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, #9 Gordie Howe, #11 Don Luce, #16 Ron Harris, #5 Serge Lajeunesse; Vancouver #9 Ed Hatoum, #15 Rosaire Paiement, #5 Darryl Sly, Helmeted Wayne Maki, #16 Ted Taylor, #12 Mike Corrigan, #3 Pat Quinn

 This game was most likely from March 25, 1971 at Detroit Olympia as Detroit’s #12, Tom Miller was acquired from the Rangers on February 2nd of that year, this is the only #12 listed on Detroit's roster for the entire season. At that point in the year Detroit had only one more game hosting Vancouver, March 25. The Red Wings won this game 4-3.


Comments

dsd said…
#12 with the Red Wings was actually Bruce MacGregor.

Like a lot of good Red Wing players that started the season in Detroit, he was purged by Ned Harkness on February 2/71. Given that, the only games the Canucks played at Olympia before that date were on November 26/70 and January 24/71. The November game was a peaceful affair. The same can't be said of the January tilt, as the game summary shows a ton of penalties being issued at 16:12 of the third period with the Red Wings solidly in control. The game ended 7-3.
December 20, 2016 at 5:43 AM
Nitzy said…
I found this game and figured it must have been that one as well, but I deferred to the SIHR database which has McGregor listed as #16 throughout his Red Wings career. The only #12 listed on the roster for 70/71 is Miller. Is the SIHR database wrong? Say it ain't so!
December 20, 2016 at 7:23 AM
dsd said…
I've never used the SIHR. In this case it was my memory, but the Hockey DB and Hockey Reference have numbers(mostly).
December 20, 2016 at 7:41 AM
Unknown said…
Number 12 was Macregor , he was traded shortly after this game, it was a Sunday evening game in Detroit, January 24 ,1971 at Olympia Stadium. This all broke out after Detroit scored 5 goals in about 5-6 minutes, they trailed 3-2 , the goal outburst happened and then this... hahaha . This was the first professional hockey game I ever attended, my dad took me on a last minute decision.
December 29, 2021 at 6:27 PM
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