Manly, Magical Mustaches – Tim Young

1981-82 Topps - Tim Young

-Jofa bucket
-Early 80’s hockey flow
-High cuff Cooper mitts
-Koho wood stick
-North Stars classic green unis
-Epic Mustache

Can you ask for anything more on a hockey card?  I dare you.

Manly, Magical Mustaches – Dennis Maruk

1981-82 Topps - Dennis Maruk

Interesting things about Dennis Maruk:

-He played in the NHL for the California Golden Seals
-He led the NHL’s Cleveland Barons in scoring in both of their NHL seasons in the late 1970’s
-He was the first Washington Capital to score 100 points in a season
-He was the first Washington Capital to score 60 goals in a season (25 years before that Ovechkin kid)
-He was fourth in the NHL in scoring in 1981-82

He did all this while standing 5 foot 8.  He can grow a Fu Manchu if he wants to.  You try doing all that.

Amazing Airbrushing – 1981-82 Topps, Lucien DeBlois

1981-82 Topps - Lucien DeBlois

Well, in honour of all the rumours of the Jets returning to Winnipeg, here is a great airbrushing job of Lucien DeBlois from 1981-82 Topps.  This is one of the best hockey card sets Topps ever made… in terms of amazing airbrushing, anyway.  I’m not even going to point out any subtleties here.  This is just a spectacular hot mess from the blurry photo to the skewed logo.  These things should be in a fucking museum.

Let’s also talk about this Jets thing.  They were never very good.  It’s hard to win in the coldest place in the universe.  DeBlois did, however, in his three years with the Jets, help them to three of their best seasons ever from 1981-82 to 1983-84 – they made the playoffs every year, playing a total of 10 playoff games in three seasons!  So close!  To think what might have been…

Winnipeg, do you really want them back?

Fantastic Fashions – The V’s of Vancouver

1981-82 Topps - Stan Smyl

The Vancouver Canucks look so at home now in their original blues and greens that we forget that there were about 30 years of “questionable at best” or “clusterfuck” uniforms in between blue and green.

Included among these were the “Big V” jerseys of 1978-1985, sported here by Canuck legend Stan Smyl, who, as it turns out, was young once.  You will note the V on the front of the jersey, the V on each sleeve, V on the pants, and, it appears, even the V on the socks.  Clearly, this was a fine era for fantastic fashions.

Haircuts I Wish I Could Pull Off – The Ron Duguay

1981-82 Topps - Ron Duguay

Duguay was a pretty good hockey player, scoring 30 or more goals three times in the NHL, but he was best known for his off-ice activities and the people that he was seen with partaking in said activities.

Check out this great article from People magazine back in 1984.

With a haircut like his, it’s no wonder the guy was a celebrity.

Manly, Magical Mustaches – Terry Ruskowski

1981-82 Topps - Terry Ruskowski

Note the C on Ruskowski’s sweater.

They called them sweaters back then.

We’ve been over this before.  It’s a simple formula:

Mustache = Leadership.

Amazing Airbrushing – 1981-82 Topps, Don Luce

Why, Topps?  Why?

1981-82 Topps - Don Luce

Reasons this is amazing:

1. Full body airbrush job.  Intense, aggressive effort from the artists at Topps.
2. Blue and gold gloves unaltered from his days with the Buffalo Sabres.
3. Not even an attempt at jersey numbers on the sleeves.
4. Two-tone blue socks – never worn by the Leafs.
5. The logo.  Either the artist was a Leaf hater, or he let his kid do some of his work for him.

Incredible.