A Year for the Record Books

If you could etch your name into the history books, what would you choose to write? For a group of fourteen hockey players, they decided to inscribe a season the record books may never see broken. The Clinton comets joined the eastern hockey league in 1954 and five years later were kings of the league. By 1967 the Comets had established a tremendous following with two championships under their belt. Forward Dave Armstrong says, "If you didn't have it 3 or 4 deep at the Clinton Area and looking through the smoke and everything like this, it wasn't a game. I mean our crowds were fantastic even in Utica here when we played here Wednesday and Friday nights, we had great people, great people."

And Clinton fans had every reason to support their comets. During the 1967-68 season Clinton only lost 5 games during a 72 game season. No other professional hockey team has ever had that few losses in one season. Player coach Pat Kelly says, "Two or three season after we had that five game loss, Montreal Canadians in April only had 3 losses and I thought uh oh, the Canadians were winning two, three and four championships in a row but they ended up losing 8 games and I think that was around 70, 1970. So that's the closest anyone has ever come to only lose 8 games." Forward Jack Kane says, "It's a record that probably will not be broken, we had 57 wins, 5 losses and 10 ties in a 72 game season, it's just we had an amazing hockey team that just clicked together."

Less than a decade later the Comets took off for other leagues and eventually out of Clinton altogether, but their records still stand to this day and at the height of their reign captured three championships. Kelly added, "When you only lose 5 games, but I think again when I go back when we won three cups in a row, league and playoff championships, that's a great memory to have to do three times in a row in three years."