Trade Watch Day Three

This is Bill Hicke at (I believe) the 1967 training camp for the Oakland Seals. It was a crazy TC for the Seals, with Jacques Plante hired to coach and then playing so well in scrimmages he almost made the team in front of Charlie Hodge.The Seals were star-crossed: Bill Masterton lost his life in a game against Oakland that first season, Hicke himself became very ill during the season and missed a tremendous amount of playing time, and young hotshot millionaire owner Barry Van Gerbig started losing a lot of his Standard Oil and Union Carbide dollars because no one liked the Oakland Seals.It should be mentioned that the old Western Hockey League (a pro league like the AHL, not to be confused with the junior league) flourished for decades in cities like San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles and that there were fans in the area but the Seals were so bad no one wanted to watch unless they were being paid to do so (and even then many of the veteran Seals asked for a trade during the f...