After 2,000 games in San Jose, it’s still the right place, right time for Randy Hahn

It was the right place, the right time for San Jose Sharks icon Randy Hahn.

In 1988, the Edmonton native and his then-wife, meteorologist Roberta Gonzales, were living in San Diego. But Gonzales had just been hired by a San Jose television station, and Hahn saw a column in the San Jose Mercury News that changed his life.

We paid for the Mercury News by mail, at that time you could buy an order by mail, there was no internet then. “It’s like three or four days old, but we wanted to start getting to know the community by reading the paper and also looking at the ads for rentals because we’re going to move there and whatnot,” the San Jose Sharks TV play-by-play man told San Jose Hockey Now 2,000 on the eve of the game.

The Mercury News had a very famous writer. It was a column of local notes. It was like Herb Caen in San Francisco Chronicle. This guy’s name was Leigh Weimers, and he wrote about local things, local stories, local personalities, things that were happening around town. It was probably the most read thing in the Mercury News outside of the sports or finance pages.

And Leigh Weimers’ column had a story about a group of hockey fans who were going to meet at the House of Pizza in San Jose, which is still there today, and they were going to talk about trying to bring an NHL team to San. Jose.