Sal Barry is the editor and webmaster of Puck Junk. He is a freelance hockey writer, college professor and terrible hockey player. Follow him on Twitter @puckjunk
The NHL held a celebrity hockey game, called the 2017 NHL All-Star Celebrity Shootout, prior to the All-Star Skills Competition on Saturday. Unfortunately, the game was only shown online, and while the webcast could have been so much better, the game was still fun to watch.
Singer, songwriter and pop icon Justin Bieber was among the celebrity hockey players, and while I am not a fan of his music, I will admit that he did very well for himself in the game. Bieber’s skating was solid, and though his slap shots left a lot to be desired, he drew a penalty, assisted on a goal and popped in an empty-netter at the end of the game.
So, I decided to make some custom Justin Bieber hockey cards, because he was arguably the most-skilled celebrity at the All-Star Celebrity Shootout.
Some guy with 91 million fans played in the Celebrity NHL All-Star Game. Too bad it wasn’t on TV.
Sometimes, the level of amateurishness displayed by the NHL in 2017 surprises me. The league held a celebrity all-star game on Saturday prior to the NHL Skills Competition. One player in the game was international pop sensation Justin Bieber. And yet, the NHL didn’t even bother to televise this game — not even on the NHL Network, which just ran a bunch of talking heads in that time slot.
The NHL streamed the 2017 NHL All-Star Celebrity Shootout on its website, and did a lousy job of it too, wasting the opportunity to raise the game’s profile and hopefully get a few new fans in the process.
The two teams — named Team Gretzky (home) and Team Lemieux (away) — had a lot of retired greats in the lineup, like Joe Sakic, Luc Robitaille, Sergei Fedorov, Peter Forsberg, Borje Salming and Larry Robinson. Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux served as the coaches. Current stars Patrick Kane and Connor McDavid played, too. Celebrities like actor Cuba Gooding Jr. and movie director/producer Jerry Bruckheimer also laced them up.
And did I mention singer/hearthrob Justin Bieber? Bieber has 91.5 million followers on Twitter — about 86 million more followers than the NHL. He even tweeted Continue reading “NHL Bungles Its Own Celebrity Game”
Upper Deck announced some changes yesterday to their e-Pack platform as a means to reduce the potential glut of insert and parallel hockey cards available on the secondary market. In a nutshell, physical insert and parallel cards obtained through e-Pack can now be combined to make an even more-limited parallel of the same card. This is bad news for those who are already sick of parallel cards, and even worse news for those who enjoyed scooping up cheap hockey cards as a result of e-Pack. So, will this move save e-Pack?
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Perhaps the design was bad. Or maybe it had a stupid name. Or the idea behind it was just dumb. In this podcast, Tim (@therealdfg) and Sal talk about the the worst hockey card insert sets from the 1990s.
Podcast #21 is 51 minutes of hockey card nostalgia.
Here’s a list of every set we talk about, with links to card images.
1992-93 Pinnacle – Team 2000 (pictures)
1992-93 Parkhurst – Cherry Picks (pictures)
1993-94 Leaf – Painted Warriors (pictures & info)
1993-94 Pinnacle – Nifty Fifty (pictures)
1993-94 Fleer Ultra – Premier Pivots (pictures)
1993-94 Fleer Ultra – Speed Merchants (pictures)
1994-95 Be A Player (pictures) – no it isn’t an insert set. We know.
1994-95 Leaf – Crease Patrol (pictures)
1994-95 Leaf – Fire On Ice (pictures)
1994-95 OPC Premier – Special Effects (pictures)
1994-95 Parkhurst – You Crash the Game (pictures)
1994-95 Pinnacle – Boomers (pictures)
1994-95 Score – Check It (pictures)
1994-95 Stadium Club – Dynasty and Destiny (pictures)
1994-95 Topps Premier – The Go-to-Guy (pictures)
1995-96 Donruss – Igniters (pictures)
1995-96 Skybox Emotion – Ntense Power (pictures)
1995-96 Pinnacle – Roaring Twenties (pictures)
1995-96 Score – Border Battles (pictures)
1996-97 Be A Player – Biscuit In the Basket (pictures)
1996-97 Fleer NHL Picks- Jagged Edge (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf – Leather and Laces (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf – Shut Down (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf – Sweaters Away (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf Limited – Bash the Boards (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf Limited – Stubble (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf Preferred – Masked Marauders (pictures)
1996-97 Leaf Preferred – Vanity Plates (pictures)
1996-97 Topps Picks – Ice D (pictures)
1996-97 Fleer Ultra – Mr. Momentum (pictures)
1997-98 Donruss Elite – Back to the Future (pictures)
1997-98 Donruss Priority (pictures) – lots of dumb inserts in this set.
1997-98 Pacific Crown Collection – Card Supials (pictures)
1997-98 Pinnacle Inside – Stand Up Guys (pictures)
1997-98 Score – Net Worth (pictures)
1997-98 Upper Deck – Sixth Sense (pictures)
1997-98 Upper Deck – Smooth Grooves (pictures)
1998-99 Pacific Omega – Planet Ice (pictures)
1998-99 Pacific Revolution – Chalk Talk (pictures)
1999-00 PacificCrown Royale – Century 21 (pictures)
1999-00 Pacific Dynagon Ice – Checkmates (pictures)
1999-00 Pacific Revolution – Ornaments (pictures)
…but due to a recording glitch, we lost the part of the podcast where we discussed them. Stupid Skype! But you know we just loved making fun of talking about Ice Quake — which sounds like a member of the X-Men — and Livin’ Large, yo.
So, what insert sets from the 1990s did you dislike back then, or even today, because of the idea, design or name? Leave a comment and let us know. ■
Podcast intro music by Jim “Not the Goalie” Howard.
All-Star. Author. MVP. Enforcer. John Scott may be the only one who can claim to be all of the above. In his new autobiography, “A Guy Like Me: Fighting to Make the Cut,” Scott takes us through his journey on how he went from a fourth-line enforcer to All-Star MVP. Anyone who wanted a tell-all about last year’s drama surrounding Scott’s controversial inclusion in the NHL All-Star Game will get that here — and more.
Unlike most of the other hockey sets from 1990-91, Score did not bother to put checklist cards in their hockey cards sets that year. However, collectors who wanted a complete list of the available cards could mail away for a page-sized (8 1/2″ by 11″) checklist. It is actually quite attractive, printed in red and blue ink and neatly lists the cards in six columns on a single side of a page.
The “1990 NHL Hockey Player List,” as it is called at the top, lists all 440 cards, including the different “American-only” and “Canadian-only” variants, as well as the five special Eric Lindros cards that were available only in the boxed sets. A key that runs along the bottom of the page deciphers the different subset cards, such as Record Setters (RS), Trophy Winners (T) and ’90 Prospects (P).
The offer was advertised on packs of 1990-91 Score trading cards.
1990-91 Score Hockey pack (Photo credit: @LindyRuffsTie)
You had to mail in $1.00 and wait six weeks.
The back of the wrapper advertised the checklist offer. (Photo credit: @LindyRuffsTie)
The full text reads:
1990 SCORE NHL HOCKEY CHECKLIST To order your complete 440 player card checklist, send a check or money order for $1.00 (U.S.) made payable to Major League Marketing along with your name and address on a 3″x5″ card and mail to: 1990 SCORE NHL Hockey List, Major League Marketing, 25 Ford Road, Westport, CT 06680. Connecticut residents add 8% sales tax. Promotion good while supplies last. Allow six weeks for shipment.
If I recall correctly, the checklist was mailed in business-sized envelope. My checklist is folded in thirds horizontally, and would fit perfectly in a #10 envelope. (As a kid, I folded it a few more times so that it would fit in a box with cards.)
With companies putting their complete trading card checklists online, mailing away for a paper checklist today seems almost unthinkable; even more pointless than putting checklists in the packs of cards, like some companies still insist on doing.
But just imagine a world where you would write a letter to a card company, ask them for a paper checklist, and then they would mail one to you six weeks later. We used to live in that world.
Did you send away for one of these 1990-91 Score Checklists back in the day? Did it help you keep track of your set? Did you actually mark it up? Leave a comment below. ■
Special thanks to @LindyRuffsTie for providing the Score pack images.
Not only was 2016 a great year for hockey collectibles, but it was a great year for this website, too. Readership has steadily grown over the past nine years, and I have all of you to thank for that. While I am working on some new articles for 2017, I just wanted to share this list of “must reads” from the past year. These were Puck Junk’s top articles from 2016:
Happy New Year! With the holidays and other obligations requiring my focus over the past few weeks, I needed to take a little break from Puck Junk and turn my attention elsewhere. But now I am back on track and ready to start writing about hockey goodness once again in 2017.
Before we get on with the new, I thought it would be good to take a look back at the year that was 2016. Yes, a lot of cool people died — rest in peace, Princess Leia and Ziggy Stardust — and a mean Oompa Loompa was elected as U.S. President.
But 2016 wasn’t a bad year for hockey collectors. We saw the introduction of a new way to buy cards, a new type of hockey card altogether, and so much more. Here are the biggest hockey collectible stories of 2016. Continue reading “Top 10 Hockey Collectible Stories of 2016”
It was a frosty Chicago afternoon in late December of 1991. I was on break from school. The “Christmas money” was burning a hole in my wallet. It burned hot enough to make me brave the cold and venture out to the local mall. For those who grew up in Chicago, the mall I speak of was the Brickyard. Back in its heyday, the Brickyard Mall was Chicago’s premier indoor shopping center. It was torn down in 2002 and rebuilt as an outdoor monstrosity, but I digress.
The Osco Drug store at the Brickyard had one side of an entire aisle dedicated to just sports cards. But behind the camera counter is where they kept the good stuff; cards like Upper Deck or Stadium Club, and not the usual 50-cents-per-pack swill like Topps or Score. Behind the counter was a full, unopened box of hockey cards that I had never seen before: Pro Set Platinum Series One.
At a glance:
– 1991-92 Pro Set Platinum Hockey
– 300 cards
– 20 “Platinum Collectible” inserts
– Size: 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″
– Download checklist
Man, was I excited! Even though I religiously read Beckett Hockey Magazine, this was the first I had heard of Pro Set issuing a high-end set of hockey trading cards. I don’t recall what they cost, but I think they were around $1 per pack. I eagerly purchased the entire box. I hurried home and opened every pack while sipping hot cocoa, and made two complete, 150-card sets; the good old days indeed.
The Los Angeles King gave a collectible holiday greeting card to their season ticket holders in December of 1992. How do we know that it is collectible? Because it has the Upper Deck logo and a serial number. In your face, Hallmark!
By the way, I should start serial-numbering all of the Christmas cards that I send out so that people save them for future collectibility and/or investment value. Of course, that would mean that I would have to actually send out Christmas cards in the first place.
Anyway, the front of the card shows a group of Kings celebrating a win at the old Great Western Forum. Robb Stauber (#35) looks eager to mess up fellow goalie Kelly Hrudey’s hair some more, as if that was possible. But the other side of the card is way better. It has a detailed illustration of Continue reading “1992 Los Angeles Kings Holiday Card”
