Thursday, June 4, 2009

Pens-Wings: The first game ever

Here's a report of the very first game the Penguins played against the Red Wings on November 10, 1967, at the old Detroit Olympia. Like most of the new "Next 6" clubs going up against the "Original 6" teams in that first season of expansion, the Pens came out on the losing end of things.
There are several funny and quirky elements in this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story. First, there's an exclamation mark in the headline, which you never see these days; the Pens are identified as the "Pengs" in the headline over the summary, a monicker that obviously (and mercifully) never took hold; the author, Jimmy Jordan, appears to have just shifted over from the Pittsburgh crime beat, with his frequent use of burglary-related terms; and, as a bit of evidence that NHL hockey was still a relatively new thing in the 'Burgh, Jordan closes the piece by informing readers that the Penguins' next game will be on Saturday night at home against the "St. Louis Flyers".

It's so much fun reading these old stories...

(You'll unfortunately have to scroll up the page a bit from the story that the link goes to; Google Archives doesn't have the actual Pens story indexed yet.)

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