Canada loses one of its all-time great amateurs

[transplant99]

Seth Martin passed away this morning in Trail after a long battle with cancer and some very recent complications.

Most people don't know who Seth is and certainly not the younger generations, but he is a Canadian legend.

Seth was one of Canada's greatest amateur players and certainly its greatest amateur goaltender in memory.

A world champion and several time world championship all star as a member of the legendary Trail Smoke Eaters. His resume is extensive but I believe his greatest accolade is that he was idolized by one Vladislav Tretiak. He was also one of the first North Americans to venture overseas (to Sweden at the time) to share ideas with Europeans and learn their systems.

He is a member of the BC Hockey hall of fame, the BC Sport hall of fame and the IIHF hall of fame IIRC.

He played one year of NHL hockey as a 34 year old rookie, splitting duties with future HOFer Glen Hall.

He is also my uncle and he will be missed. So tip one back to Seth tonight even if you don't know who is...he was a beauty..

http://www.legendsofhockey.net/Legen...p?player=18607

[Francis's Hairpiece]

Sad day. I will tip one in his honor.

[Vulcan]

Yeah, I remember him. Our school principle broadcast the Smoke Eaters games at the World Championships over the intercom.

RIP

[Locke]

Knocking one back in honour of Seth as we speak.

This is the kind of stuff that makes this sport great.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Seth is a legend in these parts. One of (if not the) best goalies to come out of this province. I remember him mostly for having a sports store in the mall in Trail many years ago, really nice guy. Definitely a legend, and will definitely tip one back in his honor tonight.

Sorry for your loss, tranny.

[Trailer Fire]

Seth is a relative of my late uncles family. I got to meet him a few times. He was a confident man, to say the least, but he was still incredibly nice. You couldn't talk hockey with him though. "If I couldn't make it, what makes you think you can?" He was also pretty ruthless when it came to Christmas auctions.

That came off a little negative. Here is a positive story. Mr. Martin would go for coffee with "The Boys" once a week or so at the place my wife worked. Everyday he came in, he would flirt with my wife. On days I was there he would tell me I was a lucky, lucky man and if he were 20 years younger he would steal her out from under my nose. He said he might even be able to do it now.

Thinking back on it, with how in love with hockey I was, I think he might have been trying to cushion the blow of not making it to the show. Apparently he chose his firefighters pension over an NHL career.

RIP Seth.

[Vulcan]

It was pretty amazing that we could send a team of amateurs over to Europe to play on their big ice, their rules and their blatantly biased refs playing in front of fans that hated us and beat the best they had to offer. Me saying they were amateurs doesn't really properly credit their talents. That team and their league had some good players who could have and did play pro.

[Vulcan]

Seth Martin also had a big influence on the growth of European goal tending.

The Trail Smoke Eaters became particularly successful in the early ’60s, when they went to Europe to play in a series of exhibition games and at the World Championship. One week players were working for a mine in the Kootenays, in British Columbia; the next they were playing along the Iron Curtain against Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the best of the vaunted Soviet national team. In this era, a Canadian goalie named Seth Martin, who remains largely unknown in his home country, became vastly influential in northern Europe. He’d show up at tournaments with fiberglass masks he’d made in his basement. Seeing him play, Finns and Swedes and Russians would imitate his craft. In the decades before VHS tapes and traveling coaching clinics and YouTube, this was how hockey knowledge spread.

In 1963, at his first World Championship, Ylönen, not yet 20, found himself at the opposite end of the ice from Seth Martin. As the game progressed, he began copying small things that the revered goalie in orange and black did, using his stick like a paddle to block passes through the crease, and inching forward out of his net to challenge oncoming shooters. Ylönen copied all the older goalies, picking up pieces of their game and making them his own. He backstopped Finland’s national team for 14 years, which exposed him to every goaltending style of the era. The award for best goaltender in the Liiga, Finland’s highest professional league, now bears his formal name: the Urpo Ylönen Trophy. To this day in Finland, Urpo Ylönen is goaltending.

So you can see Seth should even get some credit for Kiprusoff's development.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/...s-here/357579/

Calgary Puck thread about Finnish goalie system.

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?p=4631959