For those of you who were born after 1982 or so, you have no idea how different it was for a kid to collect hockey cards.  For one thing, all cards had rough backs on them; only the fronts were glossy.  And there were only two companies out there: Canada had O-Pee-Chee and the U.S. had Topps, and aside from a few differences here and there, the cards were essentially the same, except the backs of Topps cards were a shade darker, and O-Pee-Chee’s sets were about a hundred cards bigger.  Then in 1990, the all-glossy Upper Deck, Score, and Pro-Set all came onto the scene with sleek designs and varying price ranges.  Score and Pro-Set would set you back about 99 cents Canadian per pack, while Upper Deck would cost about $1.29 a pack, and $1.79 for a jumbo pack.  Those were awfully expensive for an 11-year-old like me, so I usually settled for Pro-Set and O-Pee-Chee, but I wasn’t complaining since I liked both sets, and the size of the sets were reasonable, about 400 cards or so.  I received the entire 405 card Pro-Set collection for Christmas, and I couldn’t have been happier.  It was my first set of hockey cards, sort of…

Then Pro-Set’s Series II came out that same year, adding another 300 cards to the set and things got ridiculous.  It was perfectly acceptable to have a 400-card set, because it covered all of the game’s superstars, all-stars, semi-stars, and even a few specialty cards, but to have another 300-card series?  With just 21 teams in the NHL of 1990, were there even enough players to justify DOUBLING one of the largest set of hockey cards ever produced to that point?  Absolutely not, but Pro-Set tried their damnedest to fill out that second series.  Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who played even a minute in the NHL in 1989-90 had himself a card.  Coaches had cards, referees had cards, retired players had cards for no reason, and there was also a card for a very special hockey contributor that has participated in literally every single minute of NHL, AHL, IHL, ECHL, KHL, WHA and WHL action since the dawn of time: the puck.  Yes, the hockey puck actually had a card!  What did the puck do to beat out the mouth guard and the jock strap for the glory of closing out Pro-Set’s first collection of cards, I’ve often wondered.