Hi everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the weekend. I know I sure am. I may have mentioned recently that our house is undergoing some massive renovations, and it has been a rather rough go. The work got started later than expected, which means that right now we are using our garage as a makeshift kitchen. It is a lot like camping, minus things like warm weather, and any sort of pleasure taking in our surroundings. It really sucks having to put on your winter jacket just to make toast. The weather is getting so cold now that the vegetables inside our garage fridge are starting to freeze over. My Pepsis started freezing over too and now some of the cans are oblong-shaped, which I don’t think is a good thing. I may want to drink those sooner rather than later. I’m happy to say that our new appliances finally came in this morning, the flooring is essentially done, and we can now sort-of use our kitchen space, so no more coat toast for Steve, yay!
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with former NHL goaltender Ross Brooks, who did a phone interview with me from his home in Rhode Island. I have written a chapter in my next book about his brief, but memorable NHL career. His story is truly remarkable, and after speaking with him for about 40 minutes, my appreciation for his tale only grew. Brooks was a career minor-leaguer who graduated to the NHL thanks in part to an expansion draft and the World Hockey Association, both of which took a couple of Bruin goaltenders. So, the 35-year-old Brooks became an NHL rookie. In 1973-74, his second season, Brooks reeled off 14 consecutive wins tying the record set by Tiny Thompson way back in the early days of the NHL. Surprisingly enough, on March 10, 1974, as destiny awaited Brooks, the Seals scored a shocking victory over the eventual Stanley Cup finalists, and just like that the streak was over. You may be surprised that even though newspapers of the era reported that he had matched Thompson’s 14-game winning streak Brooks’ name appears nowhere in the NHL record books. After Brooks had won two in a row coach Tom Johnson asked him to replace Gilles Gilbert in the middle of a game the Bruins were losing. Brooks was not tagged for the loss that night, but for some reason the NHL said that since that mop-up job was not a win either, the streak was actually broken at that point. Brooks then recorded 12 more wins in a row, but I’ve always believed he should have a share of the league record. He did in fact win 14 consecutive starts.
So, this week, I thought it would be appropriate to go back to that Seals-Bruins game and let you all read about it. You can read all about it right here, but since this is an article I’ve already posted, and it is frankly a little fuzzy and hard to read, I’ve added another, clearer write-up of the game, this time from the Oakland Tribune, which you may enjoy a little more.
Until next time, stay gold!