Blueline blues: 1974

We got the news today about Sergei Gonchar being out for 4-6 weeks - certainly a blow to the Pens, even if the team is playing spectacularly in the early going of this season. Thirty-five years ago, the Penguins were facing a similar situation on their blueline, with two regulars on the sidelines. Here's a P-G article describing the predicament. There's a good picture of a young Colin Campbell, now the NHL's head disciplinarian, who was brought up to fill in.

The main tidbit that really jumped out at me in this article, though, was the reference to a pre-season game the Penguins had played against the WHA's Cleveland Crusaders. I did not know that there was any kind of inter-league play between these two circuits, and perhaps illustrates that their leaders weren't quite at each others' throats as we might suspect.