Read old hockey discussions from as far back as 1981 (google groups)

[JaymzB]

Adams Division Discussion in 1985-1986:

http://groups.google.com/group/net....=gst&q=out+in+the+cold+adams#1332d100bc76465c

Les Canadiens have just exploded this year in
goal scoring, and if they can come up with a hot goaltender, they
could be in the finals, with a reasonable chance to sneak a Cup
away from the Oilers...

Pretty good call, though of course they didn't play the Oilers in that final.

 

[Oscar Acosta]

Haha, just read a good one between a Rangers and Islanders fan over prospects Brett Lindros vs. Darren Langdon. I'd post it but completely NSFW or the filters here.

Good to see the internet always provided a forum to act like a jagoff.

Also good for laughs is the group called rec.collecting.cards when you put in names, the dollar amounts people are asking for mid 90s cards of Alexandre Daigle or Paul Kariya or Felix Potvin are absolutely insane. The old collecting boom when people thought they'd get rich.

 

[kdb209]

I miss the rec.sport.hockey days. That's where "Goaltender Trivia" got started back in 1994.

Ohh, usenet et al, the pre-Mosaic internet - and back then we just needed text, and we walked 10 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways, ...

Anyone else remember uucp email addrs - we don't need no stinkin' "@".

And not quite as old as those usenet archives, but ...

Recently a google search brought be back to these - I had almost forgotten about them:

http://www.plaidworks.com/archives/sharks

A little history:

[email protected] (and it's predecessors - anyone here remember [email protected]) was a listserv run by Chuq Von Rospach - and was probably the first Sharks online community. It started during the Sharks first season and ultimately (~2005) spun off into the current SJ_sharks & sharks-tickets yahoo groups (when Chuq & Laurie finally got tired of running the lists).

Plaidworks still has archives of the postings from 1992-2005.

It can be great nostalgia just picking a random date and reading the entries. The earliest archives are just flat per-month text files - the later ones are broken into ~daily digests.

Picked at random - Nov 1992:

Date: Sun, 1 Nov 92 23:26:44 PST
From: email@hidden
Message-Id:
To: email@hidden
Subject: Sharks tie Blackhawks 4-4


Sunday, November 1, 5:30 P. M. (7:30 P. M. CST) at Chicago Stadium:

The Sharks were out-played most of the way by the Blackhawks, but Brian Hayward
came up big, stopping 40 of 44 Chicago shots to help the Sharks to a 4-4 tie
with the hapless Blackhawks and to extend the San Jose unbeaten streak to two
games. (I know, cheesy, but it's better than nothing...) Ed Belfour stopped
30 of 34 San Jose shots for the Blackhawks. The 40 shots that Hayward stopped
is a season high for the Sharks goalies.

The Blackhawks came up with more offensive pressure than the Sharks in the
first period, out-shooting the Sharks 12-6, but were sloppy on the defense,
allowing the Sharks to score twice to their once. Larry DePalma, playing in
his second game as a Shark, opened the scoring at 5:55 on the power-play.
Sandis Ozolinsh, having taken the puck from Tom Pederson in the neutral zone,
came into the Chicago zone had unleashed a slap shot that Belfour stopped.
However, there was *no* Blackhawk in front of the net fighting for the rebound,
leaving Belfour at the mercy of DePalma and David Bruce, and DePalma just beat
Belfour high for his first goal as a Shark. The Blackhawks answered with a
power-play goal of their own at 7:03. Frantisek Kucera, getting a pass from
Jeremy Roenick at the left point, skated in and let go a shot that Hayward
stopped, but Brian Noonan got the rebound and deked around Hayward, poking the
puck into the net. The Sharks went ahead again, however, less than 30 seconds
later at 7:32. Kelly Kisio, getting a pass from Jayson More behind the net,
put the puck right in front, and Ed Courtenay jumped up and poked the puck
right past Belfour for the goal.

The teams played relatively even in the second period, as the Sharks had a
12-11 shot-advantage, and the teams traded power-play goals. The Sharks
extended their lead to 3-1 at 13:31, when Kisio, having gotten a pass from
DePalma on the left boards, tried to center it right in front for DePalma and
David Bruce, who had done some excellent forechecking to get the puck to
DePalma in the first place, but the puck instead bounced off a Blackhawk skate
right in front, eluding Belfour, and went into the net. The Blackhawks
answered at 14:31. Michel Goulet had the puck on the left boards and sent it
back to the left point to Steve Smith, who slid the puck over to the right
point to Chris Chelios, who unleashed a hard shot that went through the legs of
Dave Christian and a screened Hayward and into the net.

The Blackhawks, down 3-2, came out in the third period hungry and pressuring,
out-shooting the Sharks 20-8, and almost had a win. They first tied the game
at 3-3 at 6:51 while short-handed. Mike Hudson poked the puck off a San Jose
stick just inside the Sharks zone, and found Roenick open, and fed him on a
break-away, and Roenick beat Hayward down low. The Hawks went ahead 4-3 at
11:06 on the power-play. Chelios intercepted a San Jose clearing pass at the
right point and slipped the puck over to Kucera at the left point, and Kucera
unleashed a blistering shot that got past Hayward. The Sharks, however, tied
the game at 11:46 with the final goal on the scoring sheet. Dean Evason,
fore-checking in the Chicago zone, stole the puck from Christian Ruuttu, and
shot the puck from the right circle and surprised Belfour, beating Belfour on
the glove side. Hayward then shut-down the high-pressuring Blackhawks for the
rest of the period, during which the Sharks never really had another good
chance on Belfour.

The Sharks, however, came out hungry on Belfour in the overtime, out-shooting
the Blackhawks 8-1, but Belfour made a few tough saves to preserve the tie for
Chicago.

Tonight's three stars:

1. Brian Hayward
2. Jeremy Roenick
3. Kelly Kisio

Tonight's lines:

Johan Garpenlov Brian Lawton Pat Falloon
David Bruce Kelly Kisio Ed Courtenay
Larry DePalma Mike Sullivan Dave Snuggerud
John Carter Dean Evason Jeff Odgers

Tonight's defensive pairings:

Jayson More Sandis Ozolinsh
Doug Wilson Doug Zmolek
Tom Pederson Rob Zettler

Scratches: Jeff Hackett (groin), Neil Wilkinson (nose),
Perry Berezan (groin), Petri Skriko (groin), Yvon Corriveau (back),
Pat MacLeod, Dale Craigwell. Hackett, suffering the injury in Friday's
game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, is expected to be out for 10-21
days, while Corriveau is expected to be out for 2 weeks. Wilkinson,
Berezan, and Skriko are all day-today. MacLeod re-joined the team
yesterday after spending 5 days with his wife Milissa, who is expecting
twins.

Some notes:

1. The Sharks called up Arturs Irbe today from Kansas City, and he was
on the bench tonight, having played Thursday and Saturday. This should
give Dan Ryder some playing time, as he will then share the job with
Wade Flaherty at Kansas City.

2. The Garpenlov-Lawton-Falloon line played well but was quite unlucky,
unable to score on a good number of opportunities. Garpenlov and
Falloon showed remarkable improvement on defense, and Falloon was once
even able to check Roenick into the boards. I wonder if this is not
good news for Craigwell...

3. Chelios and Smith are an excellent defensive pair; however, *no one*
should play 30+ minutes a game; Darryl Sutter, what are your other 4
defensemen for? Christmas ornaments? Chelios and Smith were markedly
slower late in the game than they were early, and that was a factor in
the Sharks' out-shooting the Blackhawks in overtime.

4. Belfour, despite the remarkable overtime performance, was really a
major problem tonight for Chicago. He probably should have gotten the
Kisio and Evason goals.

5. Pederson picked up his first NHL point on the DePalma goal. DePalma
now has 4 points in 2 games with the Sharks. However, both players
still must be returned to Kansas City when the injured players become
healthy.

 

[Fire Sweeney]

Here's one after the infamous injury faking by Kovalev during the 1995 playoffs:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec....read/thread/ff198296672c9403/b1910f9d74359be9

 

[begbeee]

Some great stuff
I dont know if it mean something.... I have checked some Slovak players briefly:
Palffy was considered better than Kovalev...
McPhee was qouted, that he was asked by Toronto's GM to trade Bondra for Sundin...
Devils fans felt really good about Stastny..

 

[JSmith81x]

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....240/2d3ba806125bf2ae?q=yzerman+choker&lnk=nl&

Some gems from an Over-rated/Under-rated thread from late 1995:

>Pittsburgh: Over: Jagr. Scores a lot, causes goals against. I'm not
>convinced he's anymore than an average player

- November 14th 1995, the season he had a career high of 149 points.

 

[IggyFan12]

Love the early stuff on Iginla:

Hi,

Well I went for the Calgary Flames today but they did not practice so I
could only get them before the game. At their hotel it was just me and my
friend. The one security guard was trying to get us out to the sidewalk as
Jarome Iginla came out. We asked him to sign and he walked about 20 meters
to us. My friend had a photo for him and a puck while I just had a puck and
a few cards. When my friend asked him to sign the 8x10 he asked him I quote
"Is the where you want it?" pointing to a part of the photo. Never in my
life have I had or heard of a player asking if he was signing in the right
spot. He signed my puck and my friends puck too. He also asked us if we were
going to the game and was real friendly. We didn't ask him for anything
else. We went to GM Place to beat the bus and we did. As the players were
coming out, nobody stopped to sign (There were about 15 people at GM Place)
except for you know who. Jarome stopped and signed for EVERYBODY. And not
only that but he signed EVERYTHING for EVERYBODY.


If you haven't heard of him he is a rookie this year and is regarded as a
VERY High prospect. He is also by far the nicest athlete I have ever met.



also when Iggy was traded to Calgary:

Iginla is a projected second or third liner. A good worker, supposedly
nothing special. I was FURIOUS when Dallas selected him in the first round.
They needed pure goal scorers, but went for another grinder. The original
report on him was "no real strong points , no real weak points".

 

[Habsfan18]

This one is pretty cool!

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....882c13672e9?q=brent+bilodeau#7c082882c13672e9

A report from a guy who just came back from the '91 Entry Draft!

 

[Infinite Vision*]

These are cool. No clue this was able to go on in the 80's. Also, to bb, Palffy was/is better than Kovalev.

 

[Awesome Sauce]

Wow, this is fascinating. Thank you for sharing these links!

 

[seventieslord]

These are cool. No clue this was able to go on in the 80's. Also, to bb, Palffy was/is better than Kovalev.

I was gonna say that!

 

[kaiser matias]

Reading from 1993 some various points came up that seem awfully familiar:

-Will Bettman change hockey to appease the US?

-If so, will you still watch?

-ABC only showing games from New York area teams

-Will the North Stars work in Dallas?

-Will the Lightning move after a few years?

-Questioning Bettman's intelligence/knowledge of hockey

-Will Hamilton ever get a team?

-Complaints about Cherry being biased against Europeans

-Steigerwald being to much of a homer for the Penguins

-Distaste for the suddenly large number of new Penguins fans

etc.

Great stuff here.

 

[Hockey Outsider]

This one is pretty cool!

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....882c13672e9?q=brent+bilodeau#7c082882c13672e9

A report from a guy who just came back from the '91 Entry Draft!

Great read. A hilarious quote:

"One fan yelled, as the Rangers took a 5-minute time-out, "You've had 51 years, what good's another 5 minutes""

 

[optimus2861]

I was pretty big into those during the day and still make the rare post. I remember alt.sports.hockey.nhl.mtl-canadiens going thermonuclear when the Patrick Roy trade happened (everyone knew it was coming, but to see just how bad it was shocked the hell out of all of us), but that seems to be missing from the archives.

 

[Hammer Time]

http://groups.google.com/group/net....8bbaaddbad1?lnk=gst&q=canada#e40858bbaaddbad1

Thread complaining about US television not caring about hockey. (Hey, when did we hear that one before?)
One guy also complains about tickets for Canada vs USSR being $30(for one of the greatest games in history!) when Oilers tickets are $10 cheaper.

http://groups.google.com/group/net....077649dc3cf?lnk=gst&q=canada#28e82077649dc3cf - A "Leafs suck" thread from 1985

The Leafs' problem this year has been that they cannot play 60 minutes of
hockey. Par for them is to play for 2 periods (usually the second and
sometimes the first or sometimes the third) and have the opposition score
four goals against them in the other period.

Sound familiar?

What the NHL governors don't want to admit is that hockey just isn't
popular in the South. Atlanta, Birmingham, St. Louis, Denver, Kansas
City (OK, that's actually West) all had teams. Only St. Louis still does.
The governors should try and sell the game where people want to buy
it. These means Canada and Northern U.S.

It's nice to know that some things never change. One guy even suggested Saskatoon(!) as a place to put an expansion franchise.

 

[WingsFan95]

This was fun, but my problem is that it's not real internet.

I don't even see how the 1984 posts are possible considering at that time it was just TCP/IP.

I think what we're looking at are some researchers or people in big business who had access to a limited network. The fact the responses are day to day indicates this.

Still, I think the term internet would not apply here. Basically what happened back in those days as I have been told is you went on a network, posted something and logged off. You then came back on to check if anyone added to it. It was an advanced post-it basically.

Really liked this discussion on the Calder in 92:

Link

 

[Bear of Bad News]

This was fun, but my problem is that it's not real internet.

Although you're correct - it was more bulletin board related at the time - you're the first person in the thread to mention "internet" in the thread (in other words, you're solving a problem that isn't there).

 

[mooseOAK*]

It's nice to know that some things never change. One guy even suggested Saskatoon(!) as a place to put an expansion franchise.

Not an expansion team but,

The Saskatoon Blues: The Story

 

[kdb209]

This was fun, but my problem is that it's not real internet.

I don't even see how the 1984 posts are possible considering at that time it was just TCP/IP.

I think what we're looking at are some researchers or people in big business who had access to a limited network. The fact the responses are day to day indicates this.

Still, I think the term internet would not apply here. Basically what happened back in those days as I have been told is you went on a network, posted something and logged off. You then came back on to check if anyone added to it. It was an advanced post-it basically.

Not the real Internet? Just TCP/IP? What do you think the "I" in TCP/IP stands for - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol.

There may be lots more boxes now, and lots more networking infrastructure, and lots of new applications build on top of the protocols, but the underlying internet infrastructure has changed a lot less than you might think.

Although technically usenet did originate using UUCP - a protocol which used point to point modem/network connections between (mostly Unix) servers - by 1986 NNTP established the TCP/IP standards for it (TCP port 119).

But you are right, usenet was basically a large distributed BBS system. Most users were either at universities or technology companies - at least initially. Later on, newsfeeds became available to many/most home users with an ISP.

Posts were made via newsreaders running locally which connected to one of many NNTP news servers. Not all servers carried all groups - most carried the big 7 (comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*), but many did not carry (or only carried a subset of) the alt.* hierarchy.

It was fairly chaotic, anyone with a server and disk space could set up their own server and connect to one or more existing ones. There were established processes (RFDs) for creating groups under the main hierarchies, but alt.* and any other hierarchies a company/school/ISP created were wide open. Some groups could be created as moderated, but most were unmoderated.

News streams forwarded posts between servers - some in near real time, others would store & forward when bandwidth was available (typically late at night). A post could take minutes, hours, or a couple of days or more before fully propagating. It was not a very robust system - many times posts would disappear or you would see responses long before seeing the original post.

Tools for searching were either primitive or non-existant.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Reading posts from 10-20 years ago in which Zetterberg is a fringe prospect who won't make the NHL, trading Forsberg's right to Quebec is OK because you got Ryan Sittler, Lidstrom has no heart and L.A. wins the trade sending Darryl Sydor to Dallas because they get Churla and Zmolek back.....is like a warning from the past about making definitive statements on message boards about things you can't possibly predict with any certainty.

 

[Habsfan18]

1992 Draft 1st round re-done 1 year later.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec....e6c8caf5425b?q=libor+polasek#403de6c8caf5425b

 

[No 19]

NHL Expansion from 1985:
http://groups.google.com/group/net....041ed62c417e?q=NHL+Expansion#ff84041ed62c417e

 

[Jumptheshark]

This is incredible. How does this stuff even exist?

everything on line is saved somewhere

 

[Jumptheshark]

NHL Expansion from 1985:
http://groups.google.com/group/net....041ed62c417e?q=NHL+Expansion#ff84041ed62c417e

gotta love the guys who were suggesting a team or teams to the maritimes

 

[Ohashi_Jouzu*]

gotta love the guys who were suggesting a team or teams to the maritimes

Well, in fairness, there were AHL teams in Halifax, Moncton, and Fredericton at the time, and the early/mid-80s were a bit before the real "hard times in the Maritimes", as we say. Unrealistic, as it is today, but not out of the realm of imagination at the time, I'm sure.