Time to knock out some hockey

It's getting down to crunch time in the NHL season, teams having anywhere from 16 to 21 games left to play.  I'm hoping I don't jinx them, but it appears that the Maple Leafs are solidly in a playoff spot for the 2nd straight year.  It'll be the first time the Leafs have made the playoffs two years straight since the 02-03 and 03-04 seasons.   That's quite a while.

I'm still working on a few hockey sets that are a little bit older than the past 15 years that I just talked about.   Everybody loves some older hockey....right?

Only managed to buy one of these league leader cards twice.   A good thing.   Love the 83-84 OPC set.  I could probably say that I love the entire decade of the 80s as far as OPC hockey goes.  When it's said and done, there won't be a set from the 80's that I don't own.

I'm listening to Denis Potvin as I write this post, he's been the color analyst for the Panthers for quite a while now.  The Dennis Maruk card comes complete with the old style wax stain on the front of the card.  Wouldn't be an 80's set without it!!

It's hard to see but the mask on the goalie in the background of the Lars Lindgren card is that of longtime analyst John Garrett.   Garrett had some great paint jobs on his masks during the 70's and 80's; just search John Garrett mask on Google and you'll see all kinds of great photos.

Mostly commons on this 83-84 OPC order, and I'm now only 9 cards short of being 2/3 done.  But that's not the only hockey I picked up on the latest COMC purchase...

I guess the phrase "pecking away" would be how you describe the speed at which I'm picking up cards for these 2 sets.  Here and there I search for lots of 86-87 OPC (Andreychuk on the left) on ebay.  Haven't found anything to my liking as of yet.   The pair of 71-72 OPC's on the right bring me up to 50 cards from that set.  Honestly, I don't anticipate finishing 71-72 OPC anytime in the next few years, what with the big RC's of Dryden, Lafleur and Dionne.  Add in several other lower tier RC's like Rick MacLeish and this set will probably cost an arm and a leg.  But it's fun to get a card or 2 here and there just to say I'm working on the set...

The first hockey card packs I ever bought were from this set, 76-77 OPC.  Dave from the Wax Stain Rookie blog sent me a bunch of these a couple years ago, and I've been picking away at this set also.  I'm a lot closer to finishing this set, needing just 58 cards now to complete. 

Hey hockey collectors, when are you ever going to see a checking line on a hockey card ever again?

Classic stuff.

Thanks for reading, Robert