1978 (1)

Cleveland Barons goalie Gilles Meloche's heraldry mask was more intimidating than his hockey team. An Old English B and a red state of Ohio surrounded his eyes and nose. White curlicues sprang from a knight's helmet on his forehead. From afar, Meloche's head looked like a white tiger's.

On March 21, 1978, Cleveland's second and last season with an NHL team was nearing its sad end. Meloche was in goal at the Richfield Coliseum, in front of 6,000 fans, as the last-place Barons played the division-leading Boston Bruins. Meloche stopped a shot from high-scoring tough guy Stan Jonathan (note the puck against his leg pad) but couldn't stop him all night. Jonathan's two goals and two assists led Boston to a 5-3 victory. It was Cleveland's 13th straight game without a win, "an honest night's work," the Cleveland Press judged, amid a "seemingly endless march toward record-breaking futility."

The Barons finished the season at 22-45-13 and moved to Minnesota to merge with the even lowlier North Stars. Meloche played in the NHL until 1988, then spent eight seasons as the Pittsburgh Penguins goaltending coach. Today, Cleveland's minor league hockey team, the Lake Erie Monsters, regularly outdraws the Barons attendance that night in 1978. A hopeful Twitter feed, @NHLinCLE, uses trivia and throwback photos to make a case for Cleveland to become a major league hockey town again.