Founding , the Seals' first coach and general manager In 1966, the NHL announced that six expansion teams would be added as a new division for the
1967–68 season, officially because of a general desire to expand the league to new markets, but also to squelch the
Western Hockey League's threat to turn into a major league. The
San Francisco Seals were one such team from the WHL. The NHL awarded an expansion team to
Barry Van Gerbig for the
San Francisco Bay Area. Van Gerbig decided to purchase the WHL club with the intent of bringing them into the NHL as an expansion team the following season. Van Gerbig had planned to have the team play in a new arena in
San Francisco, but the new arena was never built. He decided to move the team across the Bay from the
Cow Palace in
Daly City to
Oakland to play in the new
Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Arena. He renamed the club the California Seals. This was done in an attempt to appeal to fans from San Francisco, and to address complaints from the other NHL teams that Oakland was not considered a major league city and would not be a draw for fans. A year later, Van Gerbig brought the Seals into the NHL as an expansion team. The team participated with the other five expansion teams in the
1967 NHL expansion draft; however, the terms imposed by the established
Original Six teams were very one-sided in their favor. The existing NHL teams were permitted to protect nearly all of their best players, thus the players available for selection were mostly castoffs, aging players well past their prime and career minor leaguers. To bolster their roster and also to maintain a semblance of familiarity and continuity for existing Seals fans, the team retained a portion of the club's WHL roster such as
Charlie Burns,
George Swarbrick,
Gerry Odrowski,
Tom Thurlby, and
Ron Harris. The Bay Area was not considered a particularly lucrative ice hockey market; however, the terms of a new television agreement with
CBS called for two of the expansion teams to be located in California and other than the
Los Angeles Kings there were no other prospective franchise applicants of similar pedigree to the Seals. Nevertheless, while the WHL Seals had drawn well at the Cow Palace the team drew poorly in Oakland once they entered the NHL. The plan to bring fans in from San Francisco failed, and on November 6, 1967, Van Gerbig announced that the team's name would be changed to the Oakland Seals (although the league did not register the change until December 8 to focus more on the East Bay).
Struggles The Seals were never successful at the gate even after the name change, and because of this poor attendance Van Gerbig threatened on numerous occasions to move the team elsewhere. First-year coach and general manager
Bert Olmstead publicly advocated a move to
Vancouver, resulting in an offer from
Labatt's brewery to purchase and relocate the team to the Canadian city as well as a proposal to move the team to
Buffalo from the Knox brothers, who like Vancouver had been shut out of the 1967 expansion. The NHL, not wanting to endanger its TV deal with CBS, rejected both proposals. As a compromise, the NHL agreed to expand again in
1970, adding teams in both
Vancouver and
Buffalo. The Knoxes bought a minority share of the Seals in 1969, only to sell it a year later to fund the Sabres. This, as well as the team's mediocre on-ice performance, led to major changes to both the Seals' front office and the roster – only 7 of the 20 Seals players remained after the
first season. The new-look Seals were somewhat more successful. In their
second season they improved to 69 points, which while still seven games below .500 was good enough for second place in the all-expansion
West Division. The Seals were actually favored to win their first round playoff matchup against the Kings, but were upset in seven games. Oakland regressed to 58 points the
following season, but still edged out the
Philadelphia Flyers for the final playoff spot on a tiebreaker. Their second playoff appearance was a brief one as they were swept by the
Pittsburgh Penguins. Those were the only two years that the franchise made the playoffs. The league's rejection of a proposed move to Vancouver prompted a lawsuit that was not settled until 1974 (
San Francisco Seals Ltd. v. National Hockey League). The Seals organization filed suit against the NHL claiming that the prohibition violated the
Sherman Act. The Seals asserted that the league's constitution was in violation by prohibiting clubs from relocating their operations, and that the relocation request was denied in an attempt to keep the San Francisco market in the NHL and thereby discourage the formation of a rival team or league in that location. The court ruled that the NHL was a single entity, and that the teams were not competitors in an economic sense, so the league restrictions on relocation were not a restraint of trade. For the 1969–70 season the team was sold to
Trans-National Communications, whose investors included
Pat Summerall and
Whitey Ford. However, the group filed for bankruptcy after missing a payment and relinquished the team to Van Gerbig, who put the team back on the market.
Charles O. Finley purchases the franchise Prior to the
1970–71 season,
Charles O. Finley, the flamboyant and eccentric owner of
Major League Baseball's
Oakland Athletics, purchased the Seals. Finley and
roller derby boss
Jerry Seltzer had both put in bids on the team. Although Seltzer's offer was slightly better financed and included a more detailed plan for revival, a majority of NHL owners from the "old establishment" voted in favor of Finley. General manager
Bill Torrey left by mid-season due to clashes with Finley. Finley renamed the team the "Bay Area Seals" to begin the 1970–71 season. However, on October 16, 1970, just two games into the season, he changed the team name to the "California Golden Seals", following a number of other marketing gimmicks intended to promote the team to the fans, among them changing the Seals' colors to green and gold to match those of the popular Athletics. The team's uniform crest was now the word "Seals" in a unique typeface, but an alternate logo using a sketch based on a photo of star player
Carol Vadnais was used on marketing materials such as pennants, stickers and team programs. The original 1967 California Seals logo recolored in green and gold was often seen on trading cards and other unofficial material, but was never adopted by the team. The Seals are remembered for wearing white skates, but initially Torrey convinced Finley to use green and gold painted skates instead, as team-colored skates were a trend of the period. As a result of the Seals' dreadful 1970–71 season, the Canadiens had the top pick in the 1971 draft, and used it to select future
Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur. This transaction was later called as one of the most one-sided deals in NHL history.
Under the ownership of the NHL and Mel Swig The team rebounded in
1971–72, but the arrival of the
World Hockey Association (WHA) wiped out most of those gains. Finley refused to match the WHA's contract offers, causing five of the team's top 10 scorers from the previous season to bolt to the new league. Devoid of any defensive talent save for goaltender
Gilles Meloche, the Seals sank into last place again in
1972–73, where they would remain for the rest of their history. Although divisional restructuring in
1974–75 included a revamped format in which three teams in each division made the playoffs, the team's efforts were frustrated by their placement in the
Adams Division, with the strong Sabres,
Boston Bruins, and
Toronto Maple Leafs. The Seals once again finished well out of playoff contention, and were notably the only team to lose at home to the expansion
Washington Capitals. Finley soon lost patience with his struggling team, especially given the contrast to his
World Series champion Athletics. He tried to sell the Seals, but when no credible buyers came forward who were interested in keeping the team in the Bay Area, he sold the team back to the league for $6.585 million. A 1973 attempt by Finley to sell the team to
Indianapolis interests who planned to relocate the team to that city was rejected by the NHL's Board of Governors. In early 1975, newspapers reported that the Seals and Pittsburgh Penguins were to be relocated to
Denver and
Seattle, respectively, in an arrangement that would have seen the two teams sold to groups in those cities that had already been awarded "conditional" franchises for the
1976–77 season. At the same time, the league announced that if the Seals' sale to the Denver group was not completed or new ownership found locally, the franchise would be liquidated at the end of the season. The Denver arrangement fell through, and the league ran the Seals for more than a year until a group headed by San Francisco hotel magnate
Melvin Swig bought the team on July 28, 1975, with the intention of moving the team to a proposed new arena in San Francisco. The team fell just short of the playoffs, and after a mayoral election, plans for the new arena were canceled. With a new arena out of the picture, the league dropped their objection to the relocation of the franchise.
The end and aftermath Although attendance was finally showing some improvement and the team playing better, minority owners
George and
Gordon Gund persuaded Swig to seek approval to move the team to their hometown of
Cleveland. The team's final game in Oakland was a win over the Los Angeles Kings on April 4, 1976; league approval for the move was granted on July 14, and the team was renamed the
Cleveland Barons after the city's
former team in the
American Hockey League (AHL). Unfortunately, details were not finalized until less than six weeks before the start of the
1976–77 season, rendering the Barons all but invisible in Cleveland. After two more years of losses and with attendance worse than it had been in Oakland, the Gunds (by this time majority owners) were permitted to merge the Barons with the equally strapped
Minnesota North Stars on June 14, 1978. The merged team continued as the Minnesota North Stars under the Gunds' ownership, but assumed the Barons' place in the Adams Division. The Barons became the last actively playing NHL team to fold since the
Brooklyn Americans in
1942 (the franchise was formally cancelled in 1946) and the last team to cease operations since the
Montreal Maroons had their franchise formally canceled in 1947 (though they had not iced a team since 1938). As a result, the NHL were reduced to 17 teams for the
1978–79 season. In the late 1980s, the Gunds wanted to bring ice hockey back to the Bay Area and asked the NHL for permission to relocate the North Stars there. However, the league was unwilling to abandon a traditional ice hockey market like the
Twin Cities. Meanwhile, a group led by former
Hartford Whalers owner
Howard Baldwin was pushing the NHL to bring a team to
San Jose, where an arena was being built. Eventually, a compromise was struck whereby the Gunds would sell their share of the North Stars to Baldwin's group, with the Gunds receiving an expansion team in the Bay Area to begin play in the
1991–92 season, which was named the
San Jose Sharks. In return, the Sharks would have the rights to players from the North Stars and then participate with the North Stars as an equal partner in an
expansion draft with the new franchise. On May 5, 1990, the Gunds officially sold their share of the North Stars to Baldwin and were awarded a new team in the Bay Area that became the Sharks. Coincidentally, in their first two seasons in the league, the Sharks played their home games at the Cow Palace in Daly City (the same facility the NHL rejected as a home for the Seals in 1967), while their
new permanent home arena in San Jose was being completed.
Norman Green then joined Baldwin's ownership group and eventually bought controlling interest in the North Stars. Citing poor attendance and a poor arena deal at the
Met Center, Green was able to relocate the team to
Dallas following the
1992–93 season as the
Dallas Stars. ==Legacy==