1971decal from Blues Hockey School at Winterland from Larry L. in our Winterland group.

From Larry: "Barc gave that to me at one of the two day clinics he used to run. Barc was my neighbor for ten years and sometimes he would come to the tennis courts where we played hockey as kids. The first guy to ever lift my stick from behind. I gave him the same look that kids gave me when I did it to them."

From Rob M.: "I attended the Blues hockey school at Winterland in the summer of 1971. It was either a 2 or 4 week session, I don't remember which. I remember that Barclay Plager was there every day and pretty much ran the show. He was a great guy and got along great with the kids. I remember Red Berensen, Bob Plager and Ernie Wakely showing up for a few days. There was a kid named Corky who was unanimously believed to be the best player. Once I got obnoxious and stole the puck from Red Berensen, just so I could say that I did it.

Some days, they would show an instructional film on a movie projector on different aspects of hockey...passing, defense, etc. One day the movie was about checking. When they demonstrated a hip check, a big cheer went up. When the movie was over, we insisted that Barclay run the whole film backwards and he did it. He was great with that kind of thing...he wanted to give us good instruction and he wanted it to be fun.

I remember Barclay once gave us a lecture against using curved sticks. He said all the great players, like Red Berensen and Gordie Howe, all used straight sticks. "