San Francisco Seals (hockey)

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For the professional baseball team see: San Francisco Seals (baseball).

The San Francisco Seals were a minor league hockey team which played in the Western Hockey League beginning with the 1961-62 season through the 1966-67 season.

At the time, the Western Hockey League was nothing like the minor leagues you see today. Many of the teams were independently owned and operated. It might be best to think of the Western Hockey League of the early '60s as the equivalent of Pac-10 football today. The talent wasn't quite up to NHL or even American Hockey League standards. But the rivalries were intense and the entertainment value superb.

The Seals, playing out of the Cow Palace, were a big part of this. After their inaugural season, the Seals lured coach and general manager Norman "Bud" Poile south from the 1961-62 playoff champion Edmonton Flyers. Poile had won three championships in eight seasons at Edmonton. With the Seals, he would add two more.

Poile's teams generally led the league in penalty minutes. The Seals fit the mold. Led by hard-nosed players such as Orland Kurtenbach, Larry McNabb, Nick Mickoski and Charlie Burns, the 1962-63 Seals developed a fierce rivalry with the Portland Buckaroos, perennial regular season champions of the WHL. For the next two seasons, Portland-San Francisco games had the atmosphere of a heavyweight title fight. Games between the two routinely attracted crowds of 8,000 or more.

The Seals won the Lester Patrick Cup playoffs in 1962-63, defeating the Seattle Totems in the finals after eliminating Portland in seven rugged games. In 1963-64, the Seals finished a distant fourth during the regular season. But with superb play from forward Al Nicholson and roly-poly goalie Bob Perreault, San Francisco beat Portland in the first round of the playoffs and won the league title by defeating the Los Angeles Blades.

Just how big an impact did this minor-league outfit make on cosmopolitan San Francisco? Their radio announcer was none other than Bill King, longtime voice of the Oakland Raiders and Oakland A's. And for years, the roof of Tommy's Joynt, that cozy beer hall at the corner of Van Ness and Geary, displayed a hockey stick signed by members of the Denver Invaders, another WHL rival of the Seals.

For the 1966-67 season, the team played at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and were renamed the California Seals. Although considered an expansion team, it was essentially this franchise that entered the National Hockey League for 1967-68.

When the team joined the NHL it was initially called the "California Seals" to appeal to fans in both San Francisco and Oakland. However after only a few months the team had failed to attract many fans from San Francisco and the name was changed to the Oakland Seals. The name was later changed again to the California Golden Seals.