Fun fact: Darcy Rota’s cousin Randy was drafted in the 3rd round of the 1970 amateur draft by the Oakland Seals, but he never played a game for the Bay Area outfit.  Just thought I’d throw that in.

Looking at this card, I can’t decide whether or not it was a good idea.  One one hand, O-Pee-Chee got around that pesky issue of having the player wearing one team’s logo, yet needing to put a different team name on the bottom of the card.  On the other hand, that weird red splotch on Darcy Rota’s chest is really distracting.  Darcy had played half the 1979-80 season with the Atlanta Flames, so my guess is the photographer had already taken all his Vancouver Canuck shots for the season before Darcy got to the West Coast, and O-Pee-Chee had to go with Darcy’s Atlanta photo for this card.  But seriously, would it have been that egregious to just leave the Flames logo on his chest and simply write in “Now with Canucks” on the front of his card?  Instead, it looks like some sniper is getting ready to shoot Darcy with a laser sight attached not to a rifle, but to some sort of medieval canon or missile.  Look at the size of that laser! Someone is going to blow a hole in him the size of his chest!

Going to Vancouver turned out to be a blessing for Darcy, who had never scored more than 24 goals and 46 points in any one season.  With Vancouver, he not only scored a career-high 25 goals and 56 points in 1980-81, he later followed up with 40 points in 51 games the next year, and a whopping 42 goals and 81 points in 1982-83.  He was also part of the Cinderella Canucks team that made it all the way to the Stanley Cup final in 1981-82.