He's Got the Blues

The St. Louis Blues are in the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in 49 years. These are the original cards from the first hockey set I collected as a kid. It was also the Blues' first appearance.

 

 

 The older  I get the more I realize how much I have forgotten or never knew in the first place.  In doing a bit of research I read that when the NHL expanded from 6 to 12 teams it was mandated that an expansion team be in the Stanley Cup Finals.  Huh?  How was that possible?  Here's how:

From Wikipedia,

"All of the 'Original Six' teams were placed in the new Eastern Division, and all of the new teams placed in the new Western Division. Each division contributed four playoff teams. Division teams then played off to produce a divisional champion, and the two divisional champions played off in the Final to win the Stanley Cup.

The imbalance between the new teams and old was readily apparent in the standings. All four of the East Division teams had a better record than the top team in the West."

And that is how the expansion Blues made it to the Finals in their first year.  So although the Golden Knights were officially the second team to accomplish the feat they did it on an equal footing with the rest of the league. 

The Blues were the top team in the "Expansion West" their first three seasons but lost 12 straight games in the finals.  I'm not rubbing it in but after Game 1 they've run their streak to 13.  In fact, I'm rooting for them to win.  Before the Blackhawks 2010 Championship the last time they won the Stanley Cup I was just a year old.  So I feel for the Blues fan base.  

 On a trivial note (no pun intended), team names related to music are very rare.  There are the St. Louis Blues in hockey and the Utah (New Orleans) Jazz in basketball.  Minor League baseball has the Nashville Sounds.  That's all I'm aware of.  Can you think of any others?

Thanks for visiting.

The Purple and Gold

Tomorrow afternoon the Blackhawks face off against the Kings in the Stanley Cup Conference Finals. It's a rematch of last year when the Hawks took the series 4-1 and is the second series in a row where the Blackhawks will play  one of the 1967 expansion teams.  As with the Minnesota North Stars the Kings' first appearance in a Topps set was 1968-69.  Here's the complete team set that I pulled from packs back in 1968.

Before They Were "Wild"

The Blackhawks currently have a 2-0 lead in their 2nd round Stanley Cup series against the team from Minnesota, known as the Wild.  With no offense to their fans when I think Minnesota hockey I still picture the North Stars.  The North Stars first season was 1967-68 but their first cards were the ones below, 1968-69.  With the exception of Claude Larose, who was, like Danny Grant, pictured as a Canadien, this is a complete team set.  While certainly far from "pack fresh" I did pull these cards from packs over 45 years ago.