BALTIMORE CLIPPERS--THREE TIME DIVISION CHAMPIONS
The Baltimore Clippers were an American professional ice hockey team. They were the first of three Baltimore franchise team entries into the American Hockey League which played on a minor league level beneath the older, larger, and more widespread National Hockey League which extended from the United States into Canada. There they played from 1962–1976. The Clippers won their division three times: 1970–1971, 1971–1972, and1973–1974.
The Clippers withdrew from the AHL at mid-season during 1974–1975 when the short-lived competing World Hockey Association's Michigan Stags were relocated to Baltimore as the "Baltimore Blades", playing on a major league level versus the NHL. The Blades used the Clippers old uniforms, the only difference being a Blades logo replacing the Clippers logo on the home white jerseys.
The team returned to the AHL for 1975–1976, then transferred to the Southern Hockey League, where it was one of only three remaining teams when the league folded at mid-season in January 1977. The team was revived in 1979, playing two seasons in the Eastern Hockey League before that league disbanded.
An earlier Baltimore Clippers minor league ice hockey team, in the old Eastern Hockey League, existed prior to moving to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1956 and becoming the firstCharlotte Checkers team.
JIM BARTLETT
153 GOALS, 297 PTS
BOBBY RIVARD
176 GOALS, 435 PTS
MARC DUFOUR
147 GOALS, 374 PTS
GO YOU BALTIMORE CLIPPERS
Goalie Jacques Plante spent one year of his Hall of Fame career in Baltimore with the Clippers in 1965.
BALTIMORE CLIPPERS HISTORY
1962-63: The Baltimore Clippers made their American Hockey League debut. After splitting their first four games on the road, they christened the brand new Civic Center in downtown Baltimore on October 26 with a 5-4 victory over the Providence Reds. Player coach Red Sullivan tallied the game winner in front of a boisterous crowd of 7,760. Three nights later, the Clippers won their second home game 4-2 over the Quebec Aces with goalie Marcel Paille making 31 saves. On February 13, Clippers trainer Gump Embro was forced to don the goalie equipment after Paille suffered three broken fingers early in the game. Embro stopped 20 shots but Baltimore lost 4-3. Long time Clippers favorite Aldo Guidolin took over as head coach midway through the season as Baltimore finished with a 35-30-7 record. Center Dave Creighton led the team in scoring with 24 goals and 48 assists. The clippers lost in the first round of the playoffs, 2-1 to the Hershey Bears.
1963-64: In year two, the Clippers took a step back; finishing fourth in the Eastern Division with a 32-37-3 mark and missing the playoffs. Future NHL stars center Jean Ratelle and goalie Gilles Villemuer donned the ice in Baltimore. Ratelle finishing second on the team in scoring behind team leader Ken Schinkel (23g, 33a, 56pts).
1964-65: Baltimore returned to the playoffs under new head coach Jack Crawford with a trio of 30 goal, seventy point scorers in Schinkel, Gord Labossiere and Dick Meissner. Labossiere finished in the top-ten in AHL scoring; leading the Clippers with 38 goals and 41 assists. Future NHL Hall of Fame goalie Jacques Plante shared net minding duties with long time Clippers goalie Gilles Boisvert and recorded Baltimore’s first shutout and a 3.00 GAA. The first playoff round expanded to five games as Baltimore was ousted by Hershey 3 games to 2.
1965-66: The Clippers fell to fourth place in the Eastern Division and out of the playoffs with a 27-43-2 record. Baltimore hockey fixture Terry Reardon took over as head coach midway through the season. Ken Schinkel was again the team’s top scorer (30g, 45a, 75pts). Future NHL star Ed Giacomin served as a back-up to Gilles Boisvert in goal.
1966-67: Reardon’s first full season as head coach saw the Clippers improve by 24 points as they climbed to second place in the Eastern Division. Long time Clipper Willie Marshall had the best offensive season in team history; finishing third in the league in scoring with 33 goals and 56 assists. Left Winger Doug Robinson set a team record with 39 goals. Baltimore took their first playoff series in team history by beating the Quebec Aces 3 games to 2. The Rochester Americans downed the Clippers in the second round. Gilles Villemure took over as the starting goalie and recorded a team record four shutouts.
1967-68: Baltimore had their most disappointing season; finishing last in the Eastern Division with a 28-34-10 record. Tom McCarthy led the Clippers with 34 goals and 49 assists.
1968-69: Aldo Guidolin returned as head coach and long time Clippers Willie Marshall (26g, 52a, 78pts) and Jean-Marie Cossette (27g, 48a, 75 pts) finished fifth and sixth in the AHL in scoring as Baltimore returned to the playoffs with a second place finish in the division. Another long time Clipper Sandy McGregor set a team record with 44 goals.
1969-70: Two other long time Clippers Jim Bartlett (30g, 28a, 58 pts) and Bobby Rivard (21g, 35a, 56pts) led the scoring effort but Baltimore had another early playoff exit; falling 4 games to 1 to the Montreal Voyageurs.
1970-71: With Terry Reardon back behind the bench, the Clippers turned in their best season in team history by winning their first Division title with a 40-23-9 record. Rookie Fred Speck led the AHL in scoring (31g, 61a, 92 pts) to capture both the Les Cunningham Award (Most Valuable Player) and the "Red" Garrett Memorial Award (Rookie of the Year). Marc Dufour (31g, 51a, 82 pts) and Wayne Rivers (38g, 37a, 75pts) finished third and fourth respectively in AHL scoring. Despite another first round ouster in the playoffs, Reardon was named AHL Coach of the Year. On February 21, the Clippers set an NHL record with a 14-0 shutout--the most goals ever in a shutout over Springfield. Baltimore scored seven of their goals in this game off of Billy Smith, who would go to win four Stanley Cups as the goaltender for the New York Islanders.
1971-72: The Clippers followed up their best season with their second straight Western Division title; edging out Hershey and Cincinnati to take the crown. The Clippers also had their best playoff success; eliminating both Cleveland and Cincinnati in six games to advance to the Calder Cup Finals. Baltimore and Cincinnati set an AHL playoff record for most goals scored by both teams in one game with 18, when Baltimore beat Cincinnati 10-8 in game 5 of the Southern division final. Baltimore's Howie Menard set an AHL record for most points in one playoff game with 7 against Cleveland in game 5 of their Southern division semifinal. The Clippers took a 2-0 series lead over Nova Scotia in the finals before the Voyageurs won back-to-back 6-1 games at home to knot the series at two. In a critical game five at the Civic Center, Baltimore fell 4-1 and dropped another 4-1 decision on the road as Nova Scotia became the first Canadian team to win the Calder Cup.
1972-73: After their two best seasons of hockey, the Clippers hit bottom the following year with a last place finish in the West Division with a 17-48-11 record. Reardon shared coaching duties with defenseman Jim Morrison and Bobby Rivard led Baltimore with 75 points; including 50 assists. Marc Duford had 30 goals and 32 assists.
1973-74: With Reardon and Morrison continuing to share coaching duties, the Clipper went from worst-to-first and won the Southern Division with a 42-24-10 record. Baltimore had one of their best offensive seasons in history as Marc Dufour set team records with 62 assists and 104 points and finished second in the AHL in scoring. Bobby Rivard (36g, 56a, 92 pts) and Howie Menard (42g, 39a, 81 pts) finished fourth and tenth in the league in scoring respectively. After getting blown out 10-0 in game two of the opening playoff round against Richmond, the Clippers swept the next three games to take the best of five series 3 games to 2 with overtime wins in games four and five. Unable to carry the momentum into the next round, Baltimore got swept in four games by eventual Calder Cup champion Hershey.
1974-75: The Clippers withdrew from the AHL midway through the season as the World Hockey Association—a rival league to the NHL---relocated its Michigan franchise to Baltimore and named them the Baltimore Blades. The Clippers knew they wouldn’t be able to compete for fan dollars against a major league; but the Blades folded at the end of the season. Bobby Rivard led the Clippers in scoring with just 37 points in their abbreviated season.
1975-76: With the WHA out of Charm City, the Clippers returned to the AHL for their final full season; finishing fourth in the South Division with a 21-48-7 mark. The next season, the Clippers jumped to the Southern Hockey League, which folded during the 1976-77 season.
Clippers, Skipjacks made Baltimore's first AHL voyages
October 05, 1995 By Phil Jackman, Baltimore Sun
Baltimore allowed the American Hockey League to roll on for 26 years (1936-1962), perhaps looking for it to smooth out the rough edges before deciding to get involved. Voila, The Baltimore Clippers.
Jumping in at the start of the 1962-63 campaign, when the league was a nine-team, two-division operation, the Clippers made it to the playoffs the first year. Over the next 14 years -- the team passed into the AHL archives in 1976 -- Baltimore made the playoffs eight times, a reasonable .571 success rate.
The league "struggled" on for the next six seasons without benefit of a Baltimore team before the Skipjacks came into existence in 1982. The Jacks were part of the AHL mix for 11 years and made the playoffs five times.
During the Skipjack years, the AHL constantly built its membership until, after the 1990-91 season, it split its 15 teams into three divisions.
With the Baltimore Bandits and Carolina Monarchs swelling the league to 18 teams, and Lowell, Mass., and Lexington, Ky., due to join up in a year or two, the AHL now has four divisions. This season, the 18 existing teams are maintaining developmental relationships with 20 of the 26 National Hockey League clubs.
The Skipjacks transferred to Portland, Maine, after the 1992-93 season. And now the Baltimore Bandits have materialized, the result of a desire by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim to have a team in a league that has always been the best proving ground for the NHL.
Those are the facts; now here's the people part of Baltimore's first and second affiliations with the AHL:
During their first nine seasons, the Clippers averaged 4,900 fans, with a low just under 4,000 in 1965-66 and a high exceeding 6,000 in 1969-70. The reasons were simple: Sports -- baseball and the Orioles, football and the Colts, basketball and the Bullets -- were flying high. Success was a given around here.
Men named Gilles Villemure, Jim Morrison, Wayne Hicks, Jean Cossette, Mike McMahon, Pete Laframboise, Fred Speck, Mark Dufour, Kent Douglas and Wayne Rivers were named to all-star squads. Those players and others -- like Willie Marshall, Aldo Guidolin, Gord Labossiere, Gil Boisvert, Andy Brown, Howie Menard, Jimmy Bartlett, the Plager brothers and Kenny Schinkel -- will be remembered by local hockey fans.
The AHL stood on its own for more than 30 years before it began moving toward being a developmental league for the NHL. Before 1967, there were six NHL clubs, and, usually, only a half-dozen or so AHL teams. Talent abounded. Willie Marshall, for instance, played 20 seasons in the AHL and scored a whopping 1,375 points (in 1,205 games) on 523 goals and 852 assists. He rarely got a chance to play in the NHL.
The Clippers faded away after drawing about 3,000 fans a game through the early 1970s. Baltimore was without hockey for six years, before the Skipjacks arrived. In just their second year of operation (1983-84), the Skipjacks had a banner season, going 46-24-10 and leading the league in points (102). Sawed-off goalie Roberto Romano had a 23-6-1 record. But the club lost in the semifinals of the Calder Cup playoffs.
The Jacks followed with a 45-27-8 season, during which Jon Casey proved the AHL's best goalie with his 30-11-4 mark, but the team lost the playoff final to Sherbrooke in six games. Two years later, the team was in the cellar, winning just 13 of 80 games.
The Skipjacks became affiliated with the Washington Capitals, and over the next few years they got strong performances from the likes of Mike Richard (44 goals and 63 assists for 107 points in 1988-89) and goalies Don Beaupre, Jim Hrivnak and Olie Kolzig.
It was after attendance tumbled to about 120,000 two years ago after averaging more than 150,000 the preceding four years that the Skipjacks franchise was moved to Portland, Maine.
Catching Up With ... Aldo Guidolin
By Mike Klingaman, The Baltimore Sun, 3/9/13
He sits quietly in a wheelchair at a long-term care facility in his native Guelph, Ontario. Aldo Guidolin doesn’t talk — multiple strokes have robbed him of his speech — but his brown eyes follow ice hockey games on TV and the movements of those who call on the aging defenseman.
At 80, life is a struggle for Guidolin, whose brawling 17-year career included four seasons with the New York Rangers and six as a popular player and coach with the Baltimore Clippers of the American Hockey League. Fans send cards seeking autographs, unaware that, after six debilitating strokes, Guidolin has lost the use of his right hand.
His wife, Phyllis, 79, visits almost daily, wheeling him around, helping with meals and doting over her spouse of 59 years.
“Aldo always smiles when I come in,” she said. “I don’t know if he knows that I’m his wife, but he might understand that I’m someone who comes to see him all the time.”
Fifty-one years ago, Guidolin was a mainstay on a fledgling Clippers team that christened the Civic Center (now First Mariner Arena) on Oct. 23, 1962. Before 7,760 jubilant fans, Baltimore defeated the Providence Reds, 5-4. That night, a 30-foot slap shot by Guidolin found the net.
His spirited play livened the Clippers, excited the crowds and earned him untold trips to the penalty box. By the time he retired here in 1969, Guidolin had spent 715 minutes in the bin for Baltimore. Sometimes he even fought while sitting in the corner.
He shrugged off those penalties, telling a Sun reporter that “I just got caught more than the other guys.”
Guidolin saw more than his share of melees, which left him with a broken wrist and leg, plus several thumbs and toes. His daughter, Barbara Guidolin, remembers her father coming home from games “with thread in his face, from stitches, or with a broken finger or two.”
Though bruised and beaten, he never complained, she said.
“Fans seemed to relish [the fisticuffs],” Phyllis Guidolin said. “We’d be sitting in the stands and friends would say, ‘Oh, Phyllis, Aldo is in a fight!’
“I’d say, ‘Let him fight.’ I never stood up to watch it. What’s remarkable is that Aldo still has most of his teeth. I’ll kid him that it’s because he always kept his mouth shut while on the ice.”
Off the ice, Guidolin’s persona changed.
“In all these years, he has never said a harsh word to me,” his wife said. “And he has never complained about his illness. After the third stroke, he could still speak, so I asked him about it. He said, ‘It’s something that I’ve been given, and I must accept it.’
“Aldo has faith.”
He has lived the life he wanted, she said: “He told me that, at 10, he was asked to write a composition on what he wanted to be when he grew up. Aldo wrote, ‘One day I’m going to play in the NHL.’
“When his teacher told him that one sentence didn’t make a composition, he looked at her and said, ‘That’s all I’ve got to say.’ “
Guidolin played for New York from 1952 through 1956, then spent his last 13 years in the AHL. For 2 1/2 years, Guidolin served as the Clippers’ player-coach, twice making the playoffs as pilot but never winning the Calder Cup.
“He loved Baltimore,” Barbara Guidolin said. “I’d go to games on Saturday nights, after which we and the players all went to a crab house where they threw pots of steamed crabs on the tables and we all dived in.”
In retirement, Guidolin served as a scout for the Atlanta Flames, then as director of player personnel for the now-defunct Colorado Rockies hockey team. At 58, tired of traveling, he settled in his old hometown.
“I always wanted to be a doctor,” Guidolin told his wife.
“You’re too old for that,” she said.
“Okay then,” he said. “I’ll sell real estate.”
That’s what he did until 2008, when he suffered the first stroke. As his health declined, Phyllis Guidolin questioned hockey’s role in it.
“There were games where Aldo hit the boards and got knocked out — and then played the next day,” she said. “I often wonder if the hockey had anything to do with this.”
There’s no doubt that the game took its toll on her dad, said Barbara Guidolin, chief nursing executive at Georgian Bay General Hospital in Midland, Ontario.
“Every additional stroke has taken more of his independence away,” she said. “But he has my mom, and they were made for each other.”
At Riverside Glen, where Guidolin resides, the walls of Room 419 are peppered with photographs of his old teams. From time to time, his wife gets calls from former players like Noel Price, of the Clippers, and Andy Bathgate, of the Rangers.
“When anyone comes by and says hi, Aldo looks at them,” she said. “I’ve often thought, what long days these must be for him, but people say that maybe he no longer recognizes time.
“I do know that he’s a great guy and that I’ve had a wonderful life with Aldo. On our first date [in 1951] he took me to see ‘Gone With The Wind,’ then out for a soda. When I got home I said, ‘Mum, I’m going to marry that man — he’s for me.’
Nothing has changed, she said:
“If I had to do it again, I’d do it tomorrow.”