So like any kid growing up, I had a bazillion trading cards. I spent hours staring at them and imagining watching the games when the pictures were taken. I would pour over the stats on the back and do quick and dirty inter-year comparisons or put certain guys against each other. I used to get a little chubby when guys finished the season with a crooked number in PIMS because I would imagine all the fighting majors. I would study how players wore their socks and which gloves guys wore. For some reason it was important to me to know what year Ray Bourque switched from D&R gloves to a pair of Sherwoods. Now I have the internet and Youtube so I don't need to stare at a Murray Craven card and use my imagination to see how he scored his 30 goals in a certain year.
Somewhere in my parent's basement in Connecticut I still have a pile of binders but there is one hockey card that really stuck with me. It's the 91-92 Upper Deck of Cujo making a ridiculous save. Look at it at the top of the page. Let it sink in.
(It took me 35 minutes on Google to find this card so when I finally found a picture of it I freaked out like one of those dopes that find out that the wings they are enjoying at a restaurant is actually made by Pizza Hut. "This isn't a restauant at all, motherfuckers! Woooo!")
A few thoughts on:
- Upper Deck had the shiniest, sharpest colored trading cards on the planet. Before 91-92 cards were brown pulpy shit. Upper Deck looked like they invented HD.
- Those St. Louis sweaters were TITS. Great (1,000) breazers. I might look for an old pair on eBay. The Wings may have the best pants in the league right now but older school, Capitals, North Stars and Flames are right up there. Some kid on our men's league teams wears green Devils breazers. I think I've written about that fact 60 times on this blog. I also really like the Tampa pants with the bolt on the side. I also had a trading card of Jeff Lazaro that showed that he had Zs shaved into the side of his head. Okay.
- Look at the save. What a picture! I always tried to figure out what angle the shot came from and how Cujo got to it. I think that Roenick tried to go low blocker and Cujo kicked this shit into the rafters. I want to think that any butterfly style netminder would have been to slow to get down on this puck but young Cujo was able to ninja kick his right leg out and get a stick on the shot.
- I love the way his glove hand flares out for balance. I think he ended up in a full split at the end of the play.
- Standup goalies were the shit. Positional goalies ruined hockey cards forever. To have a good goalie shot you need to kick out a leg and flash some glove.
- Check out the kid from A Christmas Story studying the save from the front row. How cool would it be if it turns out that that kid is actually a young Patty Berglund?
- Can we go back to the time when goalies had scuffed up pads? And how cool are those Heaton pads? That is why I love the Joey MacDonald pads because they looked like throwback pads from the 1990's. Andy Moog and Billy Ranford and all the Vaughn guys had pads in the same style.
BTW Don't get me started on this Bill Ranford picture. I could be here all day.
- I brought up the fact that I liked the Joey Mac pads to him when we shot the backup goalie show for the Isles. He choose the pads because he loves the classic look. He's the man.
- Nemmy
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