Willi Plett Autograph Card

2011-12 was the year that Willi Plett was brought back into the hockey card hobby... I'd written about his 2011-12 Enforcers card (and his career) nearly two years ago, and figured I'd feature this one as well to justify packing my 'P' binder in preparation of next week's move (yes, this will be my fourth residence in less than four years):

It's from Upper Deck's 2011-12 Parkhurst Champions set (card #97, the autographed insert sub-set, players in his category - Group D - were inserted 1:110). It shows him wearing the Atlanta Flames' red (away) uniform, probably from a pre-game warm-up (no helmet, almost-empty stands).

Despite his name being spelled correctly in front of the card and on the back where his statistics should appear, it is spelled wrong twice in the text that serves as a certificate of authenticity:

All the more reason to ''enjoy the card'', I guess!

Can you think of any other mistake the card may have? Here's one, with all due respect to a Calder trophy (Rookie Of The Year), 33- and 38-goal scorer: he's in the Champions set despite having never won a chanpionship. Not a goal-scoring nor a point-scoring championship, certainly not a Stanley Cup, though he was a member of the 1987-88 Boston Bruins that lost in the Finals.

The closest thing he has to a championship is when his Tulsa Oilers won the Central Hockey League (6 teams) title in 1975-76, the third-level minor league of the day (behind the AHL and IHL).

Still, I'm more than happy to have two of Plett's signed cards in my collection, as I consider him an important part of 1970-1980s NHL folklore.

Willi Plett Autograph Card

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On June 20th, fellow blogger Sal pulled this one as the first ''hit'' in his purchase of 3 (!!!) boxes of In The Game's 2011-12 Enforcers set. At $75-100 per pack of 12 cards, even if 5 are commons (of the 90-card set), 5 are autographs and 2 are memorabilia (jersey) cards, there was no way I was shelling out that kind of money to finish with cards of Wade Belak.

Plus, at 5 ''regular cards'' per pack, how much will it cost to mount a full set? This was just ridiculous.

Until I got an offer I couldn't really pass up: for $5, I could get in on a group that would offer me the second ''hit'', or the first one if it was of a defunct team (Atlanta Flames, Hartford Whalers, Québec Nordiques, California (Golden) Seals, Minnesota North Stars, Atlanta Thrashers, etc), or the Habs - or the right to ''trade down'' for the 7th ''hit''. So, for $5, I was getting an autograph or a jersey, and didn't have to bother with the leftovers.

The first hit ended up being the card I would have wanted: Georges Laraque (who went on record saying he wanted out of the set...), wearing my favourite third jersey of all, the Edmonton Oilers' Todd McFarlane-designed one. But the Oilers still exist, so...

The second hit ended up being of a defunct team, the above-mentioned Willie Plett card, fror the Atlanta Flames. It was destined to be my card...

Plett was born in Paraguay but grew up in Canada. He started playing hockey at age 12 and was a soft player at first, until one coach relegated him to tier-2 and he overcompensated the other way for the rest of his career.

While many view his most impressive statistic as being the 3 penalty minutes per game average he accumulated through 2572 PIMs in 834 games, I like to remember he had 33 goals and 23 assists for 56 points in 64 games, good for Rookie Of The Year (Calder trophy) status in 1976-77. He also made the move to Calgary with the rest of the team, playing two seasons there, netting 38 and 21 goals respectively.

It wasn't until he was sent to the North Stars that they made him into a full-time goon, and after a 25-goal season in 1982-83, he garnered 316 PIMs the next year, and over 750 more in the following four seasons, the last one with the Boston Bruins.

All in all I'm happy with this card, #A-WP in the set. The autograph is on a sticker, but it's made to look like a Band-Aid, and it could be the smartest integration of the sticker in the design I've seen so far.

Jean Pronovost Autographed Card

Every once in a while, a company reminds us why it's bad to have a monopoly; O-Pee-Chee was that company for most of the 70s and 80s - the only player in the game for hockey cards, and they took it overboard on more than one occasion: from showing the wrong player on a card to airbrushing a player's new colours on his uniform if he'd been traded in the summer (or even just rumoured to be traded in the case of Jacques Lemaire), or cutting cards off-center.

This card (#184 of the 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee series, by Topps) of Jean Pronovost is a nice proof of that: cut way off center, it bears the mention ''now with Flames'' and sports the Atlanta Flames' logo on the top left, but sees his wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey, one that, upon close inspection, appears painted on him, as is the helmet and gloves.

O-Pee-Chee tried to make its series special by featuring fac-simile autographs of the players on the backs of the cards; the signatures appearing there are reprinted from the players' licensing contracts, which allowed the league to sell their likenesses for use on cards and other products.

What's funny is that Pronovost, signing in a thick black sharpie at a sports convention in the mid-90s, added to O-Pee-Chee's lack of graphic design skills by putting his autograph in an area that was certain to be too small for him to sign his whole name, yet we can still see that it matches the signature on the other side of the card; my guess is he didn't want to sign over his uniform nor his face and, thus, was left with very little space. He did sign over most of his captain's 'C', though.

Pronovost is famous for being the first member of the Penguins to get more than 100 points in a season (104, in 1975-76), and for having had 4 seasons in which he scored 40 goals or more, with a peak of 52, again in '75-76, playing with Pierre Larouche and Syl Apps. Larouche also ended up surpassing the 100-point mark with 111, while Apps was stopped short at 99. Also, even though he is from Shawinigan, Québec, he only played one season of junior hockey in la Belle Province before heading to the Niagara Falls Flyers of the Ontario league.

He has a winning coaching record, both in the LHJMQ (with the Shawinigan Cataractes from 1994 to 1996 and the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies in 2000-01) and the IHL (Québec Rafales, in 1996-97).