Hockey Card of the Day #44

NNO - Stan Mikita
72-73 O-Pee-Chee Team Canada
(back)

These decapitated heads were inserted in packs of 72-73 O-Pee-Chee. I like them much better than the regular 72-73 OPC cards, though I think I would like this card even more if Mikita was wearing his trademark bulbous helmet.

Actually, this card probably ranks in my top ten favourite hockey cards, coincidentally with a couple of other cards that also feature people who have had their heads removed-- though in these cases they were reattached on someone else's body: 71-72 Rogie Vachon and Mike Corrigan.

Also notable in the category of cards featuring head transplants is the '74 Nabisco Sugar Daddy set that placed pro-athletes heads on cartoon bodies. Derek Sanderson's card is my favourite of that bunch.

Worst Ever Hockey Cards #21

#157 - Mike Corrigan
71-72 O-Pee-Chee

My new favourite card of all-time.

70-71 Topps

70-71 Topps is a pretty nice, simple set-- not the most exciting or attractive of all the 1970's sets, but it's definitely not the worst. The 132 cards in this set are almost exactly the same as the first 132 cards from O-Pee-Chee's set from the same year, though it is a little confusing why Topps would take the first 132 cards and have career minor-leaguers in the set (like Wayne Hicks and Dave Amadio, who hadn't played in the NHL since 67-68 and 68-69 respectively and would never play major-pro again) instead of players like Tony Esposito and Alex Delvecchio.

The back of the cards have a nice ugly-green background complete with an illustration and a few player stats. I always prefer to see career stats on cards, so it's especially disappointing when cards don't even list complete stats for the previous season. At least the write-ups have lots of unnecessary quotation marks.

Since the late-60's, early 70's were the era of the first two expansions and lots of players were changing teams, Topps (or OPC) decided to either crop out as much of the player's jersey out of the photo as possible or just take the logo off the jersey itself. I always disliked that in the past. Taking a logo off a jersey just makes it look like a budget set that couldn't afford the proper licensing, but now I would kind of like to see a new set do that on some those 'vintage' cards. Maybe they could bring back some airbrushing too!

Five of my favourites:

#69 - Gary Smith - It would take just a few more years for this respectable-looking young man to turn into this.

#90 - Jim Morrison - Not the oldest, but the oldest-looking man to ever play in the NHL.

#6 - Johnny McKenzie - The creepiest-looking man to ever play in the NHL?

#40 - Gump Worsley - Gump does not find that very amusing.

#105 - Bruce Gamble - Floatin'.

I got many of these images from the great Hockey Card Cyber Museum. They have all the 70's Topps sets and are starting to work on the 80's O-Pee-Chee ones. You have to get a (free) guest pass to enter the site, but it is definitely worth it.

Thanks to Jeremy and Nitzy for bringing the Hockey Card Cyber Museum to my attention. Check out their hockey blogs by clicking on their names.

I also took one image from checkoutmycards.com, which also has lots of 70-71 Topps cards for your viewing and purchasing pleasure.

Hockey Card of the Day #41 - Grand Poobah of Unibrows

#65 - Rick Hampton
75-76 Topps
(Buy it)

This guy has it all wrong-- he's got his eyebrows on his upper lip and his mustache on his forehead. And I though Thomas Jelinek was the Lanny McDonald of unibrows. . .

Hockey Card of the Day #30

#327 - Colorado Rockies (Records)
77-78 O-Pee-Chee
(back)

The best thing about this card is the stats on the back for most shutouts in a season and in a career which say "never accomplished." I know the team had only been in Colorado for one season, but if you include the stats from the team's time in Kansas City, it still would read "never accomplished."

Doug Favell eventually recorded the team's first shutout early in the 77-78 season, a 3-0 win over the Chicago Blackhawks. That one shutout gives Favell a share of the team record for most career shutouts by a Rockies goaltender. Bill Oleschuk and Bill McKenzie were the other two goalies to get shutouts during the team's six years in Colorado before they were moved to new Jersey for the 82-83 season.

Hockey Card of the Day #29

#239 - Craig Cameron
75-76 Topps
(back)

Now that's a million dollar smile!

Hockey Card of the Day #27

#156 - Rogatien Vachon
71-72 O-Pee-Chee
(back)

In the 80's, O-Pee-Chee was into airbrushing the jerseys of recently traded players. That looked bad, but just as bad was their cut and paste technique of the 70's. Rogie doesn't even have the same colour skin as the body they've pasted him on. And Larry Hillman, a defensemen, had his head pasted on a goalie's body (Joe Daley's, who was traded to Detroit after the 70-71 season).

77-78 O-Pee-Chee WHA

Nothing shows the WHA's instability better than its final O-Pee-Chee set. More than a quarter of the cards in the relatively small 66-card set have "Now with. . ." printed somewhere on the front. Four of the twelve teams that existed during the 76-77 WHA season folded prior to the release of O-Pee-Chee's 77-78 set, which would have made it hard for O-Pee-Chee to release a full sized set with the correct teams listed on each player's card, so they really didn't bother to try to get it right.

The lack of up-to-date photos makes for a nice variety of jerseys with all eight surviving teams included (Birmingham Bulls, Cincinnati Stingers, Edmonton Oilers, Houston Aeros, Indianapolis Racers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets) as well as the four teams that folded after the 76-77 season (Calgary Cowboys, Minnesota Fighting Saints, Phoenix Roadrunners and San Diego Mariners) as well as, for some reason, the Los Angeles Sharks, a team that relocated to Michigan after the 73-74 season, and the NHL's Vancouver Canucks. Since the set is only 66 cards you mostly get the WHA stars, like Bobby Hull, Frank Mahovlich and the Howe brothers, this unfortunately means players like the Carlson brothers, who played the Hanson's in the movie Slap Shot do not get cards. It's not hard to understand why O-Pee-Chee did not make another WHA set even though the league lasted until the 78-79 season-- the league was constantly on verge of going under, and judging from the number of photos reused from previous WHA sets, O-Pee-Chee had better things to do than make cards for the rebel league.

One of the nice things about this set is the number of action shots. O-Pee-Chee was sometimes guilty of putting too many boring shots of people standing around or posing. While this set does have some of that, it also has some pretty good photography, especially for a set from the 70's. There is action, and there are rad game photos of goalies. I'd also like to point out how much I love the fuzzy edges and off-centering. Sure, it means the cards aren't in mint condition, but they have so much character. Some of the cards have the line of copyright information at the bottom of the card, some have a little at the both the top and bottom, while others don't have it at all. Beautiful!

My favourites:

#1 - Gordie Howe - Gordie doesn't get a regular card in the set, just this one commemorating his 1000th professional goal. Note the Plexiglas boards!

#2 - Jean Bernier - I like the crude old Nordiques jersey and that wearing a helmet is notable enough to get mentioned on the back.

#3 - Anders Hedberg - He's got the crazy-eye!

#14 - Don McLeod - I wish we could go back to the days of double-chinned goaltenders.

#37 - Terry Ruskowski - This card came with a little piece of authentic 77-78 O-Pee-Chee gum stuck to it!

#41 - John McKenzie - if you can believe it, gramps here played another two seasons after this photo was taken.

#49 - Al Smith - Goalies looked so badass in the 70's.

Hockey Card of the Day #24

#231 - Dennis Kearns

71-72 O-Pee-Chee
(back)

He may look like a midget with a beer gut, but look closely at the marks on his neck and his self-satisfied grin-- the ladies loved him.

Wayne Gretzky Rookie

#18 - Wayne Gretzky

79-80 O-Pee-Chee

Dented, creased, stained, torn and taped. The most badass Gretzky rookie card you will ever find.

Canucks We're With You

Don Cook
Canucks We're With You (1975)
Listen!

The Canucks' 86 points wouldn't have put them any higher than third place in any other division, but it was good enough to earn them their first Smythe Division championship and a bye to the second round. Although they were beaten by Montreal in five games, the team's first division championship and playoff appearance earned them this fine two-verse masterpiece by Don Cook released by Paperback records, who, three years later, also released the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team's single, White is the Colour.

Hockey Sock Rock #2

Dionne and the Puck-Tones
Please Forgive My Misconduct Last Night (1979)
Listen!
(right click and choose "save link as" to download)

Dionne, Taylor, and Simmer are three of the ugliest dudes you'll ever see on a record cover, but they managed to make one of my favorite songs by professional athletes. That may not seem like it's saying very much, but they get some stiff competition from the Saskatchewan Roughriders' Milk Song, and the song off Shaquille O'Neal's Shaq Fu: The Return where he rhymes "I drive a Suzuki like David Suzuki."

Hockey Blog in Canada posted a sweet song about Bobby Hull here.

Hockey Card of the Day #13

#80 - Tony Esposito

79-80 O-Pee-Chee

Chicago's logo was way tougher in the 70's. Their current logo looks so positive with its nice smile and straight nose. The logo on this card looks way more like someone who would beat you up in a back alley, the way hockey logos should be.

The back of 79-80 O-Pee-Chee cards are the best of any set. They have all the stats perfectly placed in a skate with enough room left over for a fact and illustration.

Hockey Sock Rock #1

The first of my occasional posts on hockey music!

Phil Esposito & the Ranger Rockers

The Hockey Sock Rock (1979)
Listen!
(right click and choose "save link as" to download)

Not the first or best song ever recorded by NHL players, but thanks to Phil Esposito's name, a B-side by L.A. Kings players Marcel Dionne, Charlie Simmer, and Dave Taylor, the writing and producing talents of Canadian C-list actor Alan Thicke, and the fact that it was a benefit for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Hockey Sock Rock managed to avoid being the kind of regional novelty song that disappears faster than you can say "killer mustache, Davidson."

Not only was this song released as a single, there was also a music video which I was very disappointed to find out has not been put on YouTube yet. The video can be found on the 1989 VHS, Super Dooper Hockey Bloopers, which you can likely find at your local thrift store or flea market.

In case you are wondering why it says "oops" beside Pat Hickey's name, he was traded to the Colorado Rockies early in the 79-80 season, before the single was released. I guess that means he no longer qualified as a Ranger Rocker.

Phil and the Ranger Rockers' career in music wasn't finished with the Hockey Sock Rock, the group (minus Davidson because he's too ugly and Pat Hickey because his new coach, Don Cherry, would've benched him for the rest of the season) also sang in this Sasson Jeans commercial posted below.

Hockey Card of the Day #3

#323 - Boston Bruins
77-78 O-Pee-Chee
(back)

I think this is the simplest card ever made. It's just a logo on a piece of cardboard; no background, no words, no messing around. Other companies have tried making similar cards, but they just don't have the class of O-Pee-Chee.

Hockey Card of the Week #4

#32 - Don Burgess
74-75 O-Pee-Chee WHA
(back)

The Blazers were Vancouver's other major-pro hockey team in the 70's. The franchise that became the Vancouver Blazers was originally supposed to be based out of Florida and called the Miami Screaming Eagles, but due to money and arena problems they never played a game in Miami and moved to Philadelphia instead where they lasted one year (72-73) before Vancouver bajillionaire Jim Pattison bought the team and moved them to Vancouver. In need of a star to replace Andre Lacriox, the WHA's all-time leading scorer who left the Blazers for the New York Golden Blades, Pattison apparently offered Phil Esposito $2.5 million to join the Blazers. Even though this was significantly more than Esposito was making in Boston, the offer was rejected and even the Blazer Belles, the team's dance squad that dressed in hot pants, couldn't keep fans interested in the two losing seasons that the team produced. Pattison relocated the team to Calgary for the 75-76 season and renamed them the Cowboys. The Cowboys lasted two years before the Miami Screaming Eagles/Philadelphia Blazers/Vancouver Blazers/Calgary Cowboys franchise finally folded. The WHA itself lasted until the 78-79 season, with the Winnipeg Jets defeating Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers to win the final Avco Cup.

Other Vancouver Blazer cards:
#6 - Bryan Campbell (back)
#19 - Mike Pelyk (back)
#25 - Danny Lawson (back)
#42 - Ron Chipperfield (back)
#48 - Don McLoed (back)
#62 - Claude St. Sauveur (back)

Hockey Card of the Week #2

#135 - California Golden Seals Checklist
76-77 O-Pee-Chee
(back)

It's pretty common to see cards that say "now with. . ." when a player has been traded or has signed with a new team, but it's not too often you get to see the same kind of note for an entire team. If you look closely at the card, it looks like it has been painted, or maybe it's another tinted black and white photo like the Don Cherry card I wrote about last week. I only wish that O-Pee-Chee had painted Cleveland Barons jerseys on the players à la 89-90 O-Pee-Chee.

Hockey Card of the Week #1

#161 - Don Cherry
74-75 Topps

I know I usually go on about how hockey cards need to have action shots and all that, well here's the exception. I have never seen a more badass card than this one. Cherry's glare is so intense, and his mustache is so tough that he even makes Charles Bronson look like a pansy! I bet he had beaten up the photographer and insulted every minority in Canada by the time the photo shoot was done.

I'd love to have the full set of 74-75 O-Pee-Chee (I know this card is Topps, but only because I couldn't afford the O-Pee-Chee version). The design of this cards beats everything produced from the late-80's and onward (though 90-91 O-Pee-Chee comes pretty close). Putting a hockey stick in the border always looks so good that it should be a no-brainer for the card manufacturers of today.