Hurme x 3

#56421153 / gettyimages.com

#56421149 / gettyimages.com

#56421127 / gettyimages.com

Jani Hurme 2

#56668018 / gettyimages.com

Jani Hurme

#56668019 / gettyimages.com

Pivko

Miloslav Guren

"Buddy"

#19 -- Real Cloutier, Sabres

I don't think I ever saw him play during his career, but Real "Buddy" Cloutier is one of the guys that symbolizes early 1980s hockey for me: the insane WHA scoring totals, the ill-fitting eggshell helmet, the mustache. He was also one of the very first signatures I got in this set when I started collecting it, back in the 1990s.

Looking at those early '80s Nords teams, I'm amazed by the level of scoring talent they had -- the Stastnys three, Cloutier (when healthy), Goulet, Tardif, Dale Hunter, Wilf Paiement. At least in that end of the rink, they were up there with the best, but they never got up there to the Oilers/Islanders level.

Checking up on him for this post, I was amazed: Cloutier's career was over at age 29. I knew he flamed out of the NHL relatively quickly, but I figured a) he was a bit older, given those long years in the WHA, b) he went and bounced around Europe for a while, or c) both of the above. But no. 97 points in '81-'82, 67 in '82-'83, a trade to Buffalo and 60 in '83-'84, and the year that this card came out, zero in the NHL, 43 in the IHL/AHL combined, and that was that. Sabres Legends has a good writeup on him, giving some insight into what happened.

I got this one through the mail in the summer of 2010, probably about the fifth time I've got a copy of this card signed.

Jan Hejda

I always root for players like Jan Hejda -- guys who aren't heralded, spent their early 20s plugging away in Europe, then take a shot at the NHL. Since the first wave of Eastern Europeans, the results aren't great -- Jiri Dopita was a bust, Petr Cajanek and Jaroslav Balastik had limited success. Jonas Gustavsson might have what it takes, and I think Hejda's done well.

He signed with the Oilers at a rough time -- about the same time Chris Pronger got traded to the Ducks -- and did nice work for them in a season that didn't go too well. Letting him walk after that year was one more mistake for an organization that's made a bunch in recent times. He's now a good piece on the Blue Jackets, a team that I always kinda half-assedly root for because they've been very Czech-friendly over the years, and because they chose a bug wearing a Civil War uniform as their mascot. They're not having a great time this year -- they're going through that "step back" that all promising teams do -- and they're kind of weak up the middle, but I think they're by-and-large headed in the right direction. I hope Hejda's still on the team when they get where they're going.

Another thing I like about Hejda: guy's a fantastic signer. This is probably the fourth or fifth time I've gone to him; he's got a nice signature, he responds quickly, and he often includes a lot of extras (Russian cards and Oilers team issues).

I got this one through the Blue Jackets -- it took just over two weeks all told, not bad at all in the holiday season.

#107 -- Gordie Roberts

I really became aware of Gordie Roberts at the end of his career, when he was a steady blueliner for the Blues and Penguins. He must have been a blast to watch earlier, though, when he was putting up decent point totals and simultaneously racking up triple-digit penalty minutes. I've never thought of him that way, just as the wise old sage of the defense on those awesome early-'90s Penguins teams.

Reading about him at Hockey Draft Central is kinda interesting; he apparently had a mobile phone business in 1985(!) and also ran a wine shop. Presuming that's not Brendan Shanahan-style media guide funnery, that's a bit different. In recent years he's been involved in hockey on a management/scouting level. Right now he's a pro scout for the Canadiens.

Gordie's also a member of a hockey family; his brother and two nephews both played, among them David Roberts, one of the most frustrating players ever if you need him to complete a set. I finally got him for my all-time Blues collection by bugging his European team.

Here's a slightly out-of-date but interesting look at his North Stars career, which mentions two things I should have got to earlier: he was named in honor of Gordie Howe, and he's a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. So give it up for Gordie, whydontcha?

Large and in Charge

Among the reasons I love Roman Turek:

* nickname is "Large"
* repeated Iron Maiden homages in his mask designs
* while he seems to be the subject of general mockery these days (most Czech goalies not named Hasek end up this way), he was a really fantastic goalie for a few years there, when the Blues were always on the verge and never quite making it. His 1999-2000 season was brilliant, and 2000-01 not far behind. And I'd argue that if he were a North American goalie, he would have got a chance to redeem himself for the bad series in the 2001 playoffs (a bad series that followed two great ones, I might add).

Anyway. He's now back in the Czech Republic, and probably happier, with HC Ceske Budejovice. This is an old Ceske puck, from an early-1990s incarnation of the club, TJ Motor Ceske Budejovice. He's signed it "Turek Roman #1" -- the reversal of first and last names is fairly common among Czech players. I got this sucker on eBay, but since Turek's always been a fantastic signer, I imagine getting one of your very own wouldn't be too hard.

Something Old, Something New

Oh, hello there. So this is only about the second time I've checked in here in 2009 -- a variety of things got me off track. Time to start it up again, I think, but I haven't been thinking too much about the '84-'85 OPC collection for a while. I'll get back to it, but in the meantime something else.

Some years back, I started collecting pucks on a furious basis -- then stopped abruptly. In a rare moment of clarity, I realized that shelling out $6 apiece to get every single variety of St. Louis Blues holiday pucks was a bit stupid. Since then, I've put a few on display, got a few others signed, but mostly they've sat in a box in the back of the closet.

Now, I've dragged 'em out, and I'm getting them signed. So let's start taking a (semi-regular) look:


Martin Cerven signature on a Seattle Thunderbirds puck. I really don't know much of anything about Cerven; I'm not sure if I had ever heard of him before I went looking for an appropriate ex-Thunderbird. I wanted someone either Czech or Slovak, and since he was born in Trencin and settled in the U.S. after his career was over, he seemed like a good choice.

Born in 1977, Cerven was drafted by Edmonton in 1995 and came over to the WHL that year. He started off with Spokane, then moved to Seattle in a trade that sent future NHLer Jan Hrdina to the Chiefs. In 1996-97 he scored 52 points for the T-birds and went to the WHL All-Star Game; his rights were also traded to the Flyers, with whom he signed after the season. He never cracked the big club, playing parts of two seasons with the AHL Phantoms, and then bouncing around the ECHL for a few seasons. I suspect (perhaps wrongly) that injuries may have been a problem; he never played more than 62 games in a season after that '96-'97 year. In 2000-01, he scored 12 points in 59 games for three ECHL teams. He was waived by the Greensboro Generals toward season's end and as far as I can tell, never played again.

He's now living in the Seattle area and signed this through the mail. Since I have considerable interest in Eastern European players, I track their movements pretty carefully and take note when one of them decides to make a permanent home in North America after his career. It seems like among those who play in Canadian juniors, they're much more likely to stay in North America afterwards if they play in the WHL; off the top of my head, Jaroslav Svejkovsky, Karel Betik, and Dmitri Leonov all come to mind; I know I've come across others, too. Maybe I'm wrong but I think it's far more than Europeans in the OHL or QMJHL. What it all means, I don't know, but I find it kinda interesting.

End of Hibernation / #155 - Peter Sundstrom

So this was meant to be a several-times-a-week thing, but I haven't actually posted since November, and haven't put a card up since September. Been busy! Really! I'll try to get back on it again; I'd like to do this up right.

I've been planning to restart this, and today I got impetus in the mail:


The scan's a bit crappy; my scanner is tempermental. Hopefully I'll get a better one done this weekend, but I ain't making any promises.

Peter Sundstrom (or Sundström, if you live in a land where umlauts are easier to create on keyboards) was, to my mind, the less-famous of the Sundström brothers that came over to the NHL in the mid-'80s. I have some vague memories of Patrik playing with the Canucks and Devils, but if it weren't for the hockey card evidence, I would have completely forgotten (or didn't know about in the first place) Peter. But he did put together a decent little career, racking up 338 NHL games for the Rangers, Capitals, and Devils. After he left the NHL, he returned to Sweden and played several more seasons with Malmö. He also represented Sweden in two Canada Cups (1984 and 1987).

As an aside, the Swedish version of Wikipedia says that Patrik and Peter hold the all-time NHL record for twins playing on opposite teams in the same game, with 18. (Ron and Rich Sutter, again according to Swedish Wikipedia, faced off 17 times.) I'm not going to double-check that stat, but it is pretty cool.

Peter Sundstrom's stats at hockeydb

Trade List Announcement

Ok, it took me a week and a half rather than one day. The list is now up, with all my terms and stuff, at:

http://8485opc.blogspot.com/2008/01/czechfans-trade-list.html

Look forward to hearing from you!

Service Interruption

Well, I've managed to miss just about all of October on this. Other projects and general sloth have taken precedence. But, I'm going to get it back going tomorrow. I'll be posting a trade list in the coming days, too.

#219 - Ed Beers

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Ed Beers' name was the subject of lots of stupid jokes in the 1980s -- had I been of beer-drinking age, I would have made them, I'm sure.

I've always been under the impression that he was one of two players born in the Netherlands (the other being the late Ed Kea, who oddly, also played for the Flames and Blues), but sources seem to differ. Wikipedia, HockeyDB and his '83-'84 OPC hockey card all say he was born in Zwaag, Netherlands -- his '84-'85 OPC card and the Society for International Hockey Research say he was born in British Columbia.

He had some pretty nice numbers for Calgary from 1983 through 1985, and then was traded to St. Louis in the deal that brought Joe Mullen to the Flames. I'd expect that Beers was the showpiece coming the Blues' way, but unfortunately he only played half of one season for them, and then suffered a career-ending back injury. He was probably destined to play considerably longer in the NHL had that not happened.

Prior to his NHL career, he played for Denver University -- go Pioneers.

He's coached youth hockey in recent years, and now lives in the Vancouver area.


Ed Beers' profile at HockeyDB
Beers' profile at Legends of Hockey

Playing Catchup

Illness, home internet problems and general busy-ness have put this on hold, so I'll try to get back on track with a Two-For Thursday.

#365 -- Mike Bullard, Penguins Goal Leader

Mike Bullard was one of those great second-tier scorers of the 1980s that sort of faded into the background because he played for a lousy team and because the first-tier scorers were putting up such insane numbers. I'm pretty sure he was Pittsburgh's first-ever 50-goal scorer, with 51 in 1983-84. He also had one of the great mustaches of the 1980s, a style that always makes me think of highway patrolmen in, say, South Dakota. Yeah, he may have just busted you for speeding, but you know you're dealing with a good guy here.

Bullard started bouncing around the league pretty quickly after Pittsburgh traded him to Calgary in 1986, going from to the Flames to the Blues to the Flyers in quick succession. His career sort of derailed, too, as he went from scoring 103 points to playing in Switzerland in the space of about three years. He came back for an encore with the Maple Leafs (and while that was one of the least consequential of his NHL stops, I usually picture him as a Leaf), then went to Germany, where he carved out a really nice decade-long career as one of the league's stars. He's now a coach there, with EV Landshut, and that's where I got this card signed.

This is one of two Bullard cards in the set, and it's the less attractive of the two, but the signed regular card is also signed in the same green ink and it's pretty much impossible to see. While I love the '84-'85 design, I'm not crazy about the team leaders cards. Pastel blue and pink?

#193 -- Doug Wickenheiser

The story of Doug Wickenheiser always makes me sad, and when Eagles fans booed the selection of Donovan McNabb at the 1999 NFL draft, I thought of him. Sadly, unlike McNabb, Wickenheiser wasn't able to outshine the player (Denis Savard) he was picked over, and Montreal fans weren't the type to let that slide.

He earned a measure of redemption playing in St. Louis, where he was a key part of one of the great moments in Blues history, scoring the winner in the Monday Night Miracle game over Calgary. He also had bad luck -- the year this card came out, he suffered a severe knee injury during a team outing and missed the better part of a year. (St. Louis Blues parties seem to be a bit cursed -- Bob Gassoff died after one, and now Erik Johnson is out for the season after hurting himself on a golf cart.)

Wickenheiser played a few solid seasons for the Blues, then shuffled between the NHL and AHL for a while, went to Europe, came back and settled in St. Louis after his career, becoming a pretty well-known face in the Blues alumni. Sadly, he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and passed away in 1999, at just 37 years old.

The St. Louis Blues 14 Fund was established in his memory, and his father-in-law wrote a book, "The Last Face-Off: The Doug Wickenheiser Story." The Blues haven't retired his number, and as a fan, I wish they would.

#87 - Brian MacLellan

One of the (many) things I love about this set is its use of color. OPC unapologetically used the proper team colors as the borders, and it looks really good in conjunction with the uniforms, even on teams like the Kings, Flyers and Whalers. It's not too much, it's not a jarring contrast.

Brian MacLellan is a player that I've always had the wrong idea about. He had a face that looked like it belonged on Mount Rushmore -- steely gaze, set chin -- and I think because of that I figured he was a rougher player than he was. In reality, while no shriking violet, he only got above 100 PIMs in a season once. Part of the problem: I frequently, then and now, confused him with Brad McCrimmon.

He bounced around for about ten years (speaking of wrong impressions -- it seemed like he was around forever, and I would have imagined his career lasted 'til 1998 or so), and once he left the Kings, it was pack-your-suitcases time as he went from the Rangers to the North Stars to the Flames to the Red Wings.

He's now in the Washington Capitals management team, and that's where I got this signed.

Brian MacLellan's stats at HockeyDB
MacLellan's profile at Legends of Hockey
MacLellan profile at Bowling Green, his alma mater
MacLellan's bio on the Washington Capitals page

#340 - Morris Lukowich

Back from a weekend vacation, time to get this going again:



I've always thought the Jets cards are some of the best-looking in the set. Their early '80s uniforms are really interesting and I blame the later move to Phoenix on the sheer dullness that was the 1990s design.

Lukowich was a pretty good player in both the WHA and NHL, from a not-bad-at-all hockey family -- he's related to Bernie Lukowich of the Blues and Penguins and current journeyman defenseman Brad Lukowich. This signature is a bit curious. Every Lukowich signature I've ever seen (including several others in my collection) are either his full name or "Luke" followed by "12." This one, though, is "Luke 212." That suggests a Bible verse (and there's both a Luke 2:12 and Luke 21:2), but neither shed any light. Maybe he was just writing fast.

During this season, he was traded from the Jets to the Bruins; he'd also play for the Kings before calling it a day.

Morris Lukowich's page at HockeyDB
Lukowich's page at Hockey Draft Central
Lukowich's profile at Legends of Hockey
Lukowich profile at Winnipeg Jets Legends
Page for Morris Lukowich's "Hockey Mentors" program

#4 - Tom Fergus

Nice signature here from Tom Fergus, who went on to have several decent seasons with Boston and Toronto, before closing out his career with Vancouver. That's where I remember him best from, but only because I really liked playing Vancouver in the earliest Sega Genesis EA Sports hockey games, and he was one of the lower-liners on those teams.

Now runs Blue Leaf Limited in Toronto, and that's where I got this signature.

Tom Fergus's profile at Hockeydb.com
Fergus entry at Hockey Draft Central
Fergus profile at Legends of Hockey
Blue Leaf Limited's web page

#108 - Harold Snepsts

Harold Snepsts is one of the earliest players that made a lasting impression on my young mind, alongside more obvious selections like Gretzky/Bossy/Potvin. His physical appearance was and is pretty distinctive -- the man-mountain build, receding hairline, and of course that mustache. I think that mustache has made him into something of a cult figure in recent years, and it's kind of overshadowed his abilities as a defenseman -- people remember him less as a good, solid player and more for the 'stache.

This card came in his first season outside of Vancouver, and is the first to show the scourge of 1970s-1980s O-Pee-Chee cards -- airbrushing. Snepsts had been traded to Minnesota in time for this card to be updated, but there were no photos of him as a North Star -- so -- someone got drafted to hurriedly update his uniform. In other seasons, you'd see a severely cropped photo with just a hint of the jersey, but in 1984-85, O-Pee-Chee went 99.9% with full-body action shots, so there was nowhere to hide. This is hardly the most egregious example of the airbrusher's art -- a quick glance and you wouldn't notice anything (the autograph does obscure it even more, too). The artist managed to make Harold's shoulders even more imposing.

He lasted only one season in Minnesota, then bounced around between Detroit, St. Louis, Vancouver again and the minors for a few years. I'm pretty sure he's a youth coach in the Vancouver area these days, and does some work with the Canucks.

Harold Snepsts' stats at hockeydb.com
Profile at Legends of Hockey
Profile at Hockey Draft Central
Profile at Hockey's Tough Guys

#164 - Brad McCrimmon

Brad McCrimmon was a steady defenseman for a really long time, one of those guys you sort of forget about because he's not flashy, not hazardous, and not a thug. He spent nearly 20 years in the NHL and picked up a Cup with the 1990 Flames. I remember him most because in the early 1990s, it seemed like there was a minimum of one Brad McCrimmon card in every pack of cards I purchased.

More recently, he was a well-regarded assistant coach with my local team, the Thrashers, for several years. Word was that all the players wanted him to get the head coach job after Bob Hartley was canned, but it ultimately went to John Anderson instead and McCrimmon is now, I think, an assistant with the Red Wings (where he played for a few years, about the time I was stocking up on his cards). I don't know if he was seen as too much of a players' coach, or if the well-run machine in Detroit seemed more appealing after the dysfunction down here, or what.

Brad McCrimmon's stats at HockeyDB
McCrimmon's profile at Hockey Draft Central
McCrimmon's profile at Legends of Hockey