The Barons look a bit like the Atlanta Flames, don't they?

Agree, this is an amazing Barons video.

the footage is as good as the play-by-play is bad. No way the play-by-play guy has ever seen a hockey game before. LOL

*_it's footage of the Pens_* 😉

the announcer is Bob Prince, who became a Hall of Fame announcer for the PIttsburgh Pirates. He called two world series victories in 1960 and 1971 and watched the great Roberto Clemente play more games than anyone that ever lived on the planet.

From a guy who lives in "hockey country", Bob Prince is admittedly, a legend in baseball circles, but frankly, he was terrible calling hockey games. No objectivity whatsoever

Back when announcers had style and grace and didn't just shout!

Bob is unquestionably a legendary baseball guy dropped into a hockey game. The colour guy knows the personnel but Bob is learning on the go. At one point he says “they’re going up the court”.

no doubt he was smoking a ciggarette while calling the game

Michael Leroy we tried to bring it back but Crosby got hurt in 2011. Black and gold it better and has a better history. Blue colors were nice but the pens were in horrible shape here.

You can definitely tell he's a bit uncertain following the movement of the puck, helluva challenge for a newcomer to hockey play-by-play. Fun to hear Prince, given his legendary status calling Pirates games.

I'll give him a pass consideration he was a baseball but very painful to watch and listen , I had to turn the volume off to enjoy it

I believe Bob Prince also did Pittsburgh Steelers football for a while during this period, but I don't know if he called any of their 1970's Super Bowls.

I think WPXI Channel 11 only televised about fifteen Penguins away games a year in the team's early years, but WPGH doubled that schedule, to at least 30 regular season games a year,probably all on the road.

@@altfactorno, Jack Fleming did.

There are enough sports teams with red, white, and/or blue. Black & gold more unique.

@@gavinsheridan4680 - Yes but they already had the Bruins in black and gold. No other team was wearing the Pens' navy blue/powder blue combo.

Oh, he's pretty bad. Barely knows the players, or what's going on.

@@dejordyball we got it,now they got it

He is TERRIBLE at hockey here. Really awful.

He was terrible.

I actually liked the announcer. I thought he was a bit odd and zany at times but I liked it. He sounded an old time boxing or horse racing announcer dong hockey

Yes, Bob was a great baseball announcer, but not so much when it came to hockey.

God bless the Gunner, Bob Prince, but he was awful. I did like his line, “he lit up the lights on Broadway” though, when the Pens scored a goal!

@@Pensfan1618 The Pirates had fired Prince and he had done hockey years and years earlier. The Pens were desperate for anything that might get them more attention then, amidst bankruptcy situations and the dominance of the Steelers in the market. And, Prince WAS a legendary baseball "voice" who was still beloved in Pittsburgh. But--alas--he was TERRIBLE (as in towel) at calling hockey. As a huge Penguin fan, I was horrified.

Great sightlines for hockey in that building--not a bad seat in the house. (Most of them were always empty, of course, too.) I got to cover games there on occasion for Kent State radio and TV. Meloche was a willing and articulate interview subject. Al MacAdam was another good player for Cleveland that went on to have a nice career as a North Star.

Yeah, I heard him refer to "midcourt" as well.

Everything looks better in blue.

I've always preferred the old-style Penguins uniforms. The new ones look to much like Boston's.

Pens will always be powder blue and navy blue in my book. Never liked the switch to black and gold...

I liked the '74-75 uniforms the best, and that was a darn good team that year, too.

Same here. I had a Mario Faubert game-worn jersey that I was able to get from the team for only 50 bucks. Sadly, no longer have it...

Nah, this says October '77

@@mjp96 just meant I attended what might have been the last Barons' game in CLE vs. PIT. Didn't mean it was this particular game

@@clintscroggs65 - if you were at the April 9, 1978 game it was indeed the last game of the season and the Penguins won 3-2. Maruk had both Barons goals.

That's what made rooting for the Barons/Seals so frustrating for me. They were capable of pulling off upsets against top teams but would turn around and get clobbered by another bottom dweller two nights later.

LOLOLOL. Sounds like it !

The announcer was Bob Prince, who was the play-by-play announcer for the Pittsburgh Pirates for many years. Hockey was not his forte as you have noticed :)

Is there more!!!😊😊😊😊😊

yeah dreadful is right. Funny thing he(Prince) was a real great baseball announcer for the Pirates.

Was that the game where Holt rung up like 50 years in penalty minutes in 1 game?

@@Rockhound6165 no, that was when Holt played for the Kings. 1979 I believe.

@@steveshutt6409 Yes--Holt in L.A. at that time. Might even have been a first-round playoff game. That's a loooong time ago, now.

I was at that game in Philly

​@@Rockhound6165 no but he elbowed and fought Mel Bridgman.

Former Flyer. #8

5910 one of their largest crowds of the season

And startling to see Larouche centering ... Brian Spencer and Hartland Monahan. Syl looked barely engaged; no longer had the letter on his sweater.

To be fair the pens were so cheap that they rarely actually put the “A” on the jerseys then

@@alexyerkey3141 I think it was between 1975 and 1985 the NHL did not have the A for alternate captains.

Buffalo Televised Road games in the 70's, and living close to Hamilton Ontario, We got to see all those teams you mentioned. Minnesota and St.Louis also.

@@handlzus7018 ya growing up in Edmonton was a whole other story. Quite frankly, I don't remember even watching Oiler games on TV when they were in the WHA. I may be wrong, but I think they were only on radio in their WHA days. So literally, we got one game a week, the HNIC game on Saturday. Quite frankly, I think that was a whole lot better than being able to watch every single game, like you can today.

You described it perfectly, Dean. Living on Long Island, my friends and I did indeed find many teams "exotic" and preferred to go to Islander games where the opponent was any of the '67 expansion or more recent expansion teams, rather than Montreal, Chicago, Boston, etc. I did join the Barons Booster Club and got to meet the members at a booster convention in NY City in 1978, On the televised NHL Game of the Week in the US, it was almost always original six teams and once a year you might get St. Louis, Minnesota, Philly and Buffalo before they were good, but never the Kings, Seals, Canucks, Penguins, Caps, Scouts, Barons, Flames, etc. You really had to work to be a hockey fan and get info on these teams and a weekly subscription to The Hockey News was a must!

@@pjet8042 very cool to hear from an American perspective what it was like for you. I remember when I started reading THN in the 80's, one of my favorite sections was the section on NCAA hockey. I loved the 2 games against the same opponent, in a weekend format. That period, before the expansion of cable television, when you only got to see a few, or even one game a week, was so much better than today. The anticipation for Saturday night, or Sunday afternoon for NFL or MLB, was awesome, and made those games so much more meaningful.

@@pocobull The west coast was such a far-flung outpost for hockey in the early 70's that we often didn't get game results in the NY newspapers until 2 days later because of the time difference. I was a California Seals fan and it was crazy not knowing what my team did the day after a game in Oakland. We had an all-news radio station that would do sports every half-hour but with 2 NY teams in football, basketball and hockey they often wouldn't read off the out-of-town scores. I guess the NBC Game of the Week had one game a year with the early Sabres because Buffalo was on the east coast, because we never got to see the Canucks. The Seals were finally featured in their last season before moving to Cleveland, in a game at Chicago. Couldn't believe my eyes. The Rangers would televise a handful of road games every season on a local station and amazingly they occasionally had one from the west coast so I did stay up late to see games in LA, Vancouver and Oakland. The Islanders did have one televised game in their first season, and it was an incredible 9-7 win at Boston. Speaking of 2 games against the same opponent, that was one of the innovative features of the WHA. Because the league was a lot more spread out than the NHL with teams in Alberta, Winnipeg and Houston and later Calgary, Phoenix and Birmingham, east coast teams would sometimes play 2 games in those cities before moving on, to save travel costs. The second games must have been wild because players didn't have to wait until later in the season to avenge a grudge...

Pete Braidis you hear the angry Cleveland fans cussing and yelling at the lowly Barons as the microphones picked up on it.

I can see why. As a team they are slow, small, unable to set up plays - I don't think they were able to cycle once here - no physical presence, continually outhustled and muscled off pucks against a frankly not much better (on paper) penguin team. They sucked, really, and after a season of this I'd be cussing them out too, if I still cared by that point. Makes me wonder why Meloche tolerated such sub standard play in front of him for so long. Maruk goal a total fluke, they were no real risk to score at any point in this clip. He wasn't out there much but I thought Mike Crombeen showed the best on the team in this clip, which for its rarity is probably not one the guys would have picked had they had some input haha

Before tax dodging companies bought everything up

A mere 5910 people showed up for this one. 8^(

Jim Robson was great. Too bad The Canucks were so awful for so long.

I would say that since the North Stars partially spun off as the San Jose Sharks, the franchise went full circle from the Bay area to Cleveland to Minnesota to the Bay area.

I don't know if I'd call that a merger since the North Stars only got Maruk, MacAdam, Fidler, Greg Smith, Meloche and Gary Edwards. Minnesota only won 18 games the previous season, fewer than the Barons but only found 6 players worth taking. Maruk was immediately shipped off to Washington after 2 games. They also got JP Parise for one season at the end of his career.

Gary " Suitcase" Smith, he played for many teams

Their goalies would have been Meloche, Gary Simmons or Gary Edwards. Smitty was on a lot of teams but not Cleveland.

I don't know that the Barons coming back is a good idea. Yes, it would be really cool. The problem is, the city doesn't have, and will not approve an NHL suitable rink in the city. That will leave a similar problem to the original Barons, who had a suitable stadium, but it is located 45 minutes outside of Cleveland. On top of that, the Blue Jackets already have much of Ohio's hockey following, plus the Red Wings and Penguins both have a decent following there. It just wouldn't do enough for the sport, especially with Seattle coming in. If they made any moves in the Eastern Conference, I would be willing to bet that Quebec City would be the better fit than Cleveland. When it comes to hockey, Cleveland is definitely more of an AHL city. It would be a fun team to see back, there are just places much better fit for hockey. With multiple other hockey markets in the area, a Cleveland hockey team wouldn't make sense the way it did in the 70's with an "East-heavy" hockey market. The NHL expects a 17,000 seat stadium at minimum, and they had trouble filling 8,000 in the AHL in the city. An NHL team 45 minutes out of the way wouldn't have enough of an upside, it's the same reason the Whalers moved in '97. Just the way it is, but I would love to see a Barons uniform come back, but it doesn't seem realistic to have an entire other team come into the league.

@@N_manMETA11 Maks sense. Thanks.

NmanMETA 11 why isn’t Cleveland more of an NHL city? It’s a big city and a cold weather gritty city with blue collar roots which is very hockey like?

@@N_manMETA11 Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse is multipurpose and expecting an AHL team to draw 17,000 is foolish. They have one of best attendance figures in that league. Who cares if they're out east? If that's where the hockey fans are that's where the teams should be. Whalers moved because their arena is decrepit.

@@MusicandGamesandStuf I didn't say I expected the Cleveland Monsters to draw 17,000, I said the fact that they're in the city and barely attract 8,000 means that a team 30 or 40 minutes OUTSIDE the city would not yeild much better numbers in the NHL. That's what sunk the Barons last time, now having to compete with a fanbase like Detroit's and Chicago's, the Blue Jackets who are up and coming to be a force in the eastern conference. To somebody who doesn't know any better, them being out east doesn't matter on the surface. But you're choosing to ignore a crucial fact, the conferences are uneven. The NHL has FINALLY approved Seattle to even them out in 2021-22, only to add Cleveland and screw it up again? THAT is what I call foolish. To pretty much undo any progress they've made in the last decade. Hypothetically, if Cleveland were awarded an NHL team, to NOT undo the work toward balancing the conferences, they would really have no choice but to do a set of 4 expansion teams. That'd be very tough to do. Not impossible, they had 4 in 4 years in the late 90s and early 2000s, but to expect that is VERY... unrealistic. As a concept, just about every part of it is a total stretch. Not to say Cleveland would be a terrible hockey city, quite the opposite is true. But the way the NHL has set itself up, it would be hard. Even with relocation, I doubt any teams are moving any time soon. Maybe the Coyotes but even then, I highly doubt the league would approve pulling the plug on them right as they're just starting to not suck. Copy and paste for Florida. Carolina is probably there for good too. Aside from them, you only outside chances at relocations are the Ducks (very outside) and like Dallas if they got randomly desparate. Those two would almost require the cities of Dallas or Anaheim burning to the ground too. The reason Cleveland's location is a huge factor is BECAUSE OF THE CONFERENCES. If you can't see that, my friend you should probably do more research. By the way, don't put words in people's mouths. It tends to do good.

I wish there was tape of a Rangers-Barons afternoon game from Cleveland I saw that was televised in NY. Both teams were groggy as well as the NY announcers and one of them zeroed in on Bob Girard of the Barons. Every time he came on the ice, the guy would say, "look at Bob Girard... he's just floating up and down his wing... not hitting anyone... just collecting a paycheck" etc... It got to the point that every time Girard came on, the guy got triggered and was reduced to uncontrollable laughter, the kind of thing you would never hear on a broadcast and he really should have been muting his microphone.

8O

Yes, he was in this match.

I read that the arena was located in the middle of nowhere like Ottawa

Terry Schiffauer

@@gatherer47 he was the penguins PR man at the time. did a lot of whining when penguins were losing, which was frequently when they were on the road.

This is a really good reminder of how awful the play was in that era except for the top handful of teams. I grew up in Buffalo and although they wanted to play with the elites, in 79 they lost the first playoff round 2-out-of-3 to these awful Penguins and that was the end of it for me.