Magazines

1990-91 NHL Season Preview: A Special Advertising Supplement

If you subscribed to cable television in the 1980s and 1990s, you no doubt remember the monthly cable guide that was mailed to your home. Those thick, black-and-white magazines, usually printed on cheap newsprint-type paper, would list out everything that was scheduled to air on cable TV that month. When I was a kid, I would go through it page-by-page — hell, I’d study the thing like there was going to be a test about it — and note what hockey games were being televised that month. 

Back in October of 1990, my monthly cable guide  included this special, pull-out “1990-91 NHL Season Preview Special Advertising Supplement.” Measuring 5″ by 7-1/4″, it is an eight-page, full-color booklet printed on magazine paper instead of the typical newsprint. It has two hockey articles, some random trivia, and the burning questions for the season. 

This “advertising supplement” seems like the thing that most people would have read once and thrown away, and not carefully preserved for 30 years like I did. 

But I think we established that I am not like “most people,” and have saved some of the most random “puck junk” over the years. So, let’s take a look at what the big stories were prior to the 1990-91 NHL season. 

Continue reading “1990-91 NHL Season Preview: A Special Advertising Supplement”

The Tampa Bay Lightning: A Championship in Newspapers

lightning_newspapers_mainEditor’s Note: Zach Bare is a new writer for Puck Junk. Please give him a warm welcome — even if you’re not a Lightning fan 🙂

One of my favorite ways to remember a historical event of the Tampa Bay Lightning is to save the newspaper from the morning after. That all started back in 2004, after the Lightning eliminated the Philadelphia Flyers and won the Eastern Conference en route to their first Stanley Cup appearance. It was only by chance though, that I ended up getting my hands on and then keeping these historic headlines.

Continue reading “The Tampa Bay Lightning: A Championship in Newspapers”

Ho! Ho! Ho! Mario!

Sports Illustrated for Kids Volume 5, Number 12 – December 1993

Sports Illustrated for Kids Volume 5, Number 12 - December 1993Even though I was a bit old to be perusing Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine back in December 1993, how could I pass this issue up? The cover photograph features Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins, dressed as Santa Claus and feeding fish to penguins – tell me that does not scream “buy this magazine now!!!” Never mind the fact that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, penguins live at the South Pole and Lemieux lives in Pittsburgh. Continue reading “Ho! Ho! Ho! Mario!”

Beckett Hockey – Feb. 2008

Beckett Hockey Magazine February 2008I received my issue of Beckett Hockey for February 2008, and was pleasantly surprised to see a picture of Vincent Lecavalier fighting Jarome Iginla on the cover!

You don’t often see fighting on hockey cards (except maybe this one), and for a few years in the 1990s you didn’t even have fighting in hockey video games.

So, it shocks me–but in a good way–to see fighting on a cover of a hockey magazine. Even more so since Lecavalier and Iginla are known for scoring goals, not throwing punches.

Granted, this isn’t an NHL-made or NHL-endorsed product. You could very easily see a photo like this on the cover of The Hockey News. But on a collectibles magazine, I still find it surprising. But in a good way.

Fighting is a part of hockey. I like it when publications et. all own up to that fact.

Here is a video of the Lecavalier-Iginla fight, from the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals.