1991-92 Ultimate Draft Picks #48 – Kerry Toporowski

We all love to make fun of crummy hockey cards, from the awful “updated” photos from the 1970s and 1980s, to the cheesy pictures from the 1990s and 2000s. But the worst disservice to both the player and the fans is when the card doesn’t even show what the player looks like.

You may recall the infamous card of goaltender Bryan Pitton in Score’s 2010-11 set, where we see a sweet photograph of the back of his head. Well, this card may be worse. Back in the 1991-92 season, a short-lived card company called Ultimate pulled the same crap. They made a 90-card set of draft picks, but didn’t even bother to show the face of a San Jose Sharks prospect named Kerry Toporowski. In fact, there’s more of his butt on this card than his head!

If you never heard of Toporowski don’t feel bad. Back in 1991, all anyone was talking about was first overall draft pick Eric Lindros. Toporowski was more of a long shot. He was drafted in the 4th round because of his physical style of play. The Sharks soon traded him, along with a second round pick in next year’s draft, to the Chicago Blackhawks for Doug Wilson, who served as the Sharks’ first team captain and all-star representative.

Toporowski never made it to the NHL, and is perhaps best remembered for the ungodly amount of penalty minutes he racked up in junior and minor league hockey. Some of his highlights include:

• 63 penalty minutes in 3 games for the Spokane Chiefs in the 1991 Memorial Cup Tournament — that’s 21 PIMS per game!
• 505 penalty minutes in 65 games for the Spokane Chiefs (WHL) in 1990-91.
• 206 penalty minutes in 18 games with the Indianapolis Ice (IHL) in 1991-92.
• 413 penalty minutes in 63 games with the Quad City Mallards (ULH) in 2000-01.
• 52 penalty minutes in 3 games for the Portland Pirates (AHL) in 1997-98.

Seeing as how he was the 67th overall pick, this set would have been no worse if Ultimate excluded Toporowski. Why even bother making a card when the best photo you have is the player falling on top of another player — and it’s from the back?

What’s even more mind boggling is that the photo on the back of the card also shows Toporowski from behind — as if the photographer was afraid he’d break his lens on Kerry’s mug.

Yep, the head-to-ass ratio is about the same in this picture too.

And here’s the clincher: the cards from this set are from a photo shoot set-up by the card company. Meaning, Ultimate paid the players to scrimmage so that they could be photographed for the cards. Heck, you even see the goalies’ faces on the backs of their cards, but no one bothered to snap a pick of Toporowski while he was tying his skates?

Over two decades later, and I still find it irksome that a company would try to pass this off as a trading card.

prat·fall  • /ˈpratˌfôl / • Noun

1. A fall on the buttocks.
2. A stupid and humiliating action.

This is not a great photo for a hockey card. I mean really — who exactly is flattered by this picture? Defenseman Rob Blake, getting knocked into his own goalie? Or goaltender Kelly Hrudey, about to get his head squished by Blake’s butt? Maybe this photo would make the net-crashing Canuck look cool — if his head was in the frame.

And yet, this is the photo that was used on Rob Blake’s “Sensational Sophomore” insert card in the 1991-92 Pro Set Platinum Hockey set.

Let me rephrase that; a photo of Rob Blake’s ass about to crush Kelly Hrudey’s head was THE photo that Pro Set used for an insert card touting Blake as a “Sensational Sophomore.”

One can only wonder what the REJECTED photographs looked like. The pic might have been better utilized for a goalie mask advertisement: Easton goalie masks – made to withstand being sat on by a 220-pound defenseman.

Blake was a regular in the Kings’ lineup in 1990-91 and 1991-92, so many pictures of him should have been available for Pro Set to choose from that year. Even the picture from the back of the card would have been a better choice for the front, since you can see his face. Oh, and because he doesn’t look like a stooge crushing his own teammate.

This was not the first time a defenseman was made to look like a doofus on his own card. Ten years prior, Topps — for some strange reason — used a photo of New York Islanders defenseman  Denis Potvin falling on his own goalie. for his “Super Action” card.

Can you think of any other cards that use a very unflattering picture of a player ON HIS OWN CARD?

The Chicago Blackhawks wasted a lot of draft picks on Eastern European players in the early 1990s. For a time, it seemed like they drafted anyone and everyone from Russia or former Soviet Union countries who even showed a glimmer of promise to perhaps one day become the next Sergei Fedorov or Jaromir Jagr. One such draft pick is Alexander Andrijevski from Belarus, who played a whopping ONE game for the ‘Hawks in the 1992-93 season. Continue reading “One Game Wonder #2: Alexander Andrijevski”