Quote:
Originally Posted by looooob
thanks , so interesting
I'm not sure I knew the Flames were affiliated with Rochester at that point
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I probably hadn't read this report for 30+ years myself, so I went back and checked. It looks like the Rochester thing was a temporary last minute loaner just for those guys and the primary affiliate that season was CHL-Birmingham.
Also, one thing that is misleading is the reference at the end to the Flames having to take extra long road trips that season because they were still in the Patrick Division with the Eastern teams. Actually, the league played a balanced schedule that season (4 games vs. each of the other 20 teams for a total of 80). Although the divisions technically existed, the standings were 1 thru 21 with the playoffs seeded 1-16, so it didn't really matter what division the Flames were in schedule-wise.
As a side note, I have these reports for every NHL game from 1961 thru 1991 and recently was doing a series of posts at another site about the 1967 expansion season. For an otherwise non-descript game at Chicago Stadium in December, there was a 1-line reference to "an engine fire broke out in the Zamboni between periods leading to a short delay at the start of the 3rd period."
A guy e-mailed me and I assume in all seriousness said "not to nit pick, but I was at that game and I remember seeing smoke and guys rushing out with extinguishers, but I don't believe there were any flames so I'm not sure it was actually a fire."
I asked him about the game and he had no recollection or anecdotes about Glenn Hall in goal, or Stan Mikita pestering the other team, or Bobby Hull's booming slapshot, but he knew enough to write to me with a correction about the malfunctioning zamboni. For some reason, that struck me funny.