Pens battle back to even 1976 series vs. Leafs

After getting beaten up like a collective rag doll in Game One of their 1976 Preliminary Round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Penguins realized they too were going to have to play it tough if they were to advance out of the short best-of-three series.

This was only one of four career
playoff games for Michel Plasse. 

Back home on Igloo ice for Game Two, coach Ken Schinkel was able to get the line matchups he wanted thanks to having the last change on each shift. That meant that every time Toronto's dangerous Darryl Sittler came out, so too did Ron Schock, who shut the all-star centre down. The toughness was infectious and the entire team played like the mean-looking Penguin on the front of their jerseys, en route to a 2-0 win.

"We did intimidate them a little," coach Schinkel told the Pittsburgh Post in this article. "There were several of their guys backing up."

Goalie Michel Plasse had to stop only 21 Leaf shots to gain the shutout - which would turn out to be the only playoff one of his NHL career. "We played a helluva game as a team," he said. "We simply deserved to win."

The Pens would have to turn in another team effort the very next night back in Maple Leaf Gardens where one team would be moving on to the Quarter-Finals and the other would be heading to the golf course.

Cap carnage in 1975

As the Pens and Caps gear up for the Winter Classic, let's look back on one of the first battles between these rivals: March 15, 1975. The high-powered Pens put a licking on the expansion Capitals that night at the Igloo, firing 65 shots at the hapless Cap 'keepers en route to a 12-1 demolition.

This Post-Gazette article recaps the carnage, as well as another thrashing doled out the following night to the Kansas City Scouts, another expansion "sacrifice", as writer Bob Whitley described them. There's a nice pic of the KC goalie being beaten by Ron Schock, too.

And here's a report on the weekend goal-fest from the Beaver County Times, with comments from Rick Kehoe about his recent split with the Maple Leafs which brought him to Pittsburgh to begin a long relationship with the team.

There's also another nice pic from the Kansas City game, but why the paper's editors chose to display one of the Pens getting scored on during a weekend in which they scored 18 goals is beyond me!

Pens-Seals, 1976

Playing NHL 10 recently, I realized that one of the uniforms you can choose if playing the Dallas Stars is the California Golden Seals. It got me thinking of that old team, so I looked up some reports of their games against the Pens. The Seals did not last too long, coming in with the Penguins in 1967 and suffering through nine mostly dreadful seasons. The franchise was moved to Cleveland in 1976, lasting there only two seasons as the Barons before merging with the struggling Minnesota North Stars.

Here's a report on the Penguins' final visit to Oakland, which involved some last-minute heroics from Pens captain Ron Schock. The Penguins would win the final battle back in Pittsburgh the following month, to end with a 27-16-16 all-time record.