1979

Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time

On a live wire right up off the street

You and I should meet

Junebug skipping like a stone

With the headlights pointed at the dawn

We were sure we'd never see an end to it all

And I don’t even care to shake these zipper blues

And we don’t know

Just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

Double cross the vacant and the bored

They’re not sure just what we have in the store

Morphine city slipping dues down to see

That we don’t even care as restless as we are

We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts

And poured cement lamented and assured

To the lights and towns below

Faster than the speed of sound

Faster than we thought we'd go, beneath the sound of hope

Justine never knew the rules,

Hung down with the freaks and the ghouls

No apologies ever need be made, I know you better than you fake it

To see that we don’t care to shake these zipper blues

And we don’t know just where our bones will rest

To dust I guess

Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below

The street heats the urgency of sound

As you can see there’s no one around

("1979", The Smashing Pumpkins)

Ah, 1979. Disco reigned supreme. Alien and Apocalypse Now played in movie theatres alongside  Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the Amiteyville Horror, The Jerk, Meatballs, and The Muppet Movie. Joe Clark was Prime Minister, and then he wasn't. 

A young Pat Quinn took the reigns of the Philadelphia Flyers for his first full season behind the bench as an NHL head coach. He would go on to win that season the first of his two Jack Adams Awards as the NHL Coach of the Year.

After appearing in only one game during his rookie season the year before, Steve Tambellini was working hard on his conditioning back home in Trail B.C. during the off-season in an effort to make the roster of the New York Islanders, the prevailing hockey dynasty of the time. He would go on that year to play in 45 regular season games, scoring 5 Goals and adding 8 Assists for 13 Points to go with 4 PIM and no playoff appearances, but good enough for a Stanley Cup Ring just the same. He would later be traded in mid-season in 1980-81 to the Colorado Rockies.

The Edmonton Oilers joined the National Hockey League for the 1979-80 season along with fellow WHA teams Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets. Of these four teams, the Oilers are the last one standing. The others are the forerunners of Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche, and Phoenix Coyotes.

The NHL Expansion Draft took place on June 13, 1979 with the Oilers able to retain Wayne Gretzky via a priority selection. The 1979 NHL Entry Draft took place on August 9 (an interesting date for Oiler fans, to be sure), 1979 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. It is generally considered one of the deepest draft classes on record, featuring in the first round future hall-of-famers like Mike Gartner, Ray Bourque, and Michel Goulet. 

With the 21st Pick Overall in the 1st Round General Manager Glen Sather and Chief Scout Barry Fraser selected from the Quebec Remparts the first English-speaking captain of a QMJHL team, a blue-chip defenceman named Kevin Lowe.

In the 2nd Round of the 1979-80 NHL Entry Draft, Sather and Fraser traded down to acquire Dave Semenko from the Minnesota North Stars. The GM/Scouting tandem would strike gold again with the 62nd Pick Overall in the 3rd Round (from Minnesota) when they selected from the Saint Albert Saints of the AJHL  a solid two-way centre with a mean streak named Mark Messier.

 

In the 4th Round of the 1979-80 NHL Entry Draft, Sather and Fraser selected from the Burnaby Winter Club, the University of Denver, and the Canadian National Team, a rugged and speedy scoring RW named Glenn Anderson.

I was six years old in 1979. It is the first time I really watched hockey on television and followed the fortunes of my heroes in the newspaper and on the radio, as the speedy and skilled group of youngsters put together a dramatic late-season winning streak to make the playoffs in their first NHL season. My heart broke when they were swept in three games by guess who? Pat Quinn's Philadelphia Flyers.

A year later, I would again celebrate the Oilers fortunes as Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, and Andy Moog joined the ranks of my heroes, and Wayne Gretzky continued to set records as a teenager. The young Oilers would go on to stun the hockey world by sweeping in three games the heavily -favoured Habs, before pushing the New York Islanders Stanley Cup Champion Dynasty juggernaut to six games.

I'm not sure what any of this means other than here I sit, 30 years later, looking forward to this weekend's NHL Entry Draft and toward the future...