Here’s what I remember most about the last time a National Hockey League expansion team advanced to the Stanley Cup finals in its debut season: Interviewing Montreal Canadiens goalie Gump Worsley while he sat on the commode.

The background: In 1968, a half-century before the Vegas Golden Knights rolled into this week’s Cup finals in their inaugural campaign, the first-year St. Louis Blues made it to the championship round against the Canadiens, seven times the Cup winners in the previous 12 years.

The 1967-68 Blues had a far less challenging path than 500-to-1 shot Vegas to get that far, because Vegas is the only first-year member of the league’s current 31 teams. In 1967, the NHL had doubled in size from its “Original Six” franchises to 12 and, by placing the six new teams in a separate division with a playoff format that kept the divisions apart until the finals, guaranteed an expansion team would play for the title.

The Blues had finished third among the six newbies during the regular season. But after loitering near last place for more than three months, they began to defy their melancholy nickname. And that’s when I came into the picture.

In 1968, I was a junior in the University of Missouri’s Journalism School, where the curriculum included working on the staff of the Columbia Missourian, the J-School-operated city newspaper. My editor, future ESPN luminary John A. Walsh, somehow began assigning me—or letting me—cover the occasional Blues home game as the team evolved into a major sports story in the state.

The drive from campus to St. Louis took two hours each way. But whatever terms and conditions were required to fit such a commitment into my schedule were readily accepted and, frankly, I have no recollection of prioritizing other activities. I don’t remember missing any classes, yet in exhuming old Missourian clippings from my personal archives, I find there was a surprising number of treks to the Gateway City that semester.

There were my dispatches of a late-January Blues victory over the Minnesota North Stars—only the second hockey game I had seen in my life; of an early February loss to reigning Cup champion Boston in which St. Louis fans delayed the game 20 minutes by throwing debris on the ice after a Blues’ goal was overruled; of a late February tie against Montreal.

In April, I covered four games through the first two rounds of the playoffs, a delightful glimpse at big-time sports journalism. The Blues featured a collection of interesting characters: Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, his chin thrust defiantly forward at all times. The rough-and-tumble Plager brothers, Barclay and Bob, always ready for some fisticuffs. Defenseman Al Arbour, unique for playing while wearing glasses (and soon to coach the Islanders to four consecutive Stanley Cup titles). Balding 14th-year NHL goalie Glenn Hall who, like virtually all those manning his position in that antediluvian age, did so minus a protective facemask. And star forward Gordon (Red) Berenson.

At the time, a Florida-based pop group called the Royal Guardsmen had a novelty hit song, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” inspired by the recurring storyline in Charles Schulz’ “Peanuts” comic strip of Snoopy the dog imagining himself as a World War I airman fighting Germany’s Red Baron ace. Of course Berenson, the 1967-68 expansion division’s Player of the Year, immediately was dubbed The Red Baron.

Anyway, there I was at the St. Louis Arena on May 5, 1968, for the first game of the Cup finals—upstart Blues vs. the storied Canadiens—a 3-2 overtime victory for Montreal. And again on May 7 for Game 2: Canadiens 1, Blues 0. Naturally, the two grizzled old goalies—Hall was 36 then, Worsley days short of his 39^th birthday—were to be sought for post-game remarks.

Hall had saved 35 of 36 Canadiens’ shots, beaten only by Serge Savard early in the third period. Worsley had turned back all 19 Blues attempts.

In the cramped Montreal lockerroom, steamy from showering players, a handful of us reporters were searching for Worsley when he called from a toilet stall, “In here, fellas,” and urged the brief questioning to begin. An interesting introduction to Sportswriting 101.

He assured that he and his mates would go back to Montreal and wrap up the series in the next two games. “What’s the use of winning two here and going home and lose two on our own ice?” he said.

Sure enough, two games later the Canadiens were again kings of their universe. Sitting on hockey’s figurative throne.