The following article from the Vancouver Sun of February 19, 1964 was copied and sent to me by Dana to supplement my recording of Southern California senior hockey history. Dana is working on a history of hockey 'from way' back in Southern California.
by Jim Brooke
The man sat in the artfully contrived darkness of the bar and drank a rum and cola.
He looked like any other egg scoffling in an empty saloon in the middle of the afternoon. He wasn't celebrating.
"I gave it 12 years," Duke Edmundson, a refugee from the San Francisco Seals said with a sigh. "And I'd do it all over again - with a few changes, that is."
The Duke, as they say in show business, is temporarily "at liberty." He didn't want it that way, but he had just so much controls over his own fate as a buck private in the Red Army.
Last week the Seals who have been playing so badly that San Francisco has stopped buying fur coats in protest, jettisoned Edmundson. They tried to post him to the American Hockey League.
The Duke stood on his own aristocratic prerogative. He said: "No!"
So he got knocked out of the box.
Shore Won Popularity Poll
"I'm 31 and I was having a lousy year." Edmundson said. "Let's face it, I'm the kind of a guy that's got to have a reason for playing. I'm past the stage where I'd play for pure pleasure.
"I scored 34 goals last year. Is that so terrible?"
"Why am I on the outside looking in? I couldn't get along with Bud Poile. That may surprise you because Poile is great with the press - and other people. He's not great with me."
The Duke, who tops off 200 pounds of gristle with the traditional crew cut, admitted that you've got to take people as you find them.
He said that when he was shuffled off to ol' Massa Eddie Shore's puck plantation at Springfield (Massachusetts) in the AHL, people told him he could do better at Belsen. They said the big difference between Shore and Castro is that the former is a beardless non-smoker.
"I found Shore to be a helluva fine guy," Edmundson said. "I liked him and we got along very well. I had such a good year that I moved up to Toronto in the NHL."
The Duke wasn't in town with his former servicemen, the Seals. He was up here on his own to see about a visa which will allow him to take advantage of a job opportunity in Los Angeles.
"I've been offered a really good job as a factory representative in LA." he said. "It would do me a lot of good business-wise if I could play with the Blades. They are trying to make some kind of deal for me. But the way it is with Poile. I don't like my chances."
"When the hockey high shots sit down to carve up its victims, the recalcitrant player winds up with a cheese sandwich.
Edmundson, an Alberta junior product. broke into pro hockey in the Montreal chain. He bounced arount the minors like all the other human medicine balls. Did time at Cincinnati, New Westminster, Springfield and points south.
But he had one full season with the Toronto Maple Leafs a couple of seasons ago. It wasn't a bad semester at that. In fact it looked like he might really catch on because he has the size and is a solid skater.
Some of the Suds Rubbed Off
"Listen, I really enjoyed that year with the Maple Leafs," he said. "I guess I thought I was home free becuase I had a job as a salesman for one of the breweries, and I really worked at it."
What the Duke meant is that in the beer selling dodge you have to sit around with the boys and absorb a certain amount of the suds. There are people who can wax enthusiastic at this kind of gig.
So Edmundson wound up a training camp that fall with a 40-pound flab on his back. Game over, Clyde, back to the boondocks.
"How about that Mickoski taking over the Seals when they were on a nice little eight-game losing streak?" somebody said. "That Poile is pretty cagey. If the club keeps losing the people will remember they finished this season under Mickoski. And if they make it to the playoffs, they'll say Poile showed sheer genius in appointing Mickoski in the Nick (get it, boobela) of time."
"Yeah." Edmundson said, "that Bud's one sweet guy. Forget it, yet.
"Nick's a nice guy. Really. And you know what happens to nice guys."
Last night at the Forum, Nick Mickoski and his trained Seals gobbled up the Canucks like a gallon of chummed herring.
Last night D. Edmundson also enjoyed a contest of skill and science. The minor hockey game his son played in at Capilano.