I sometimes get the impression the NHL of 1980 made it its mission to absolutely eradicate any evidence it once had a team in Atlanta. First, you had the classic Darcy Rota card that looked like someone was aiming a laser-scoped missile launcher at his chest, and now you’ve got this beauty here featuring the Flames/Maple Leafs’ Richard Mulhern.

I don’t really understand what O-Pee-Chee was trying to accomplish with this one. It clearly says he’s “Now with Maple Leafs” so ok, I’ve got that part; he’s no longer a Flame. Problem solved, right? But then OPC goes out of its way to airbrush the old Atlanta Flames logo with some pink fluorescent ink which doesn’t hide the logo at all. If anything, the pink draws more attention to it. If OPC really wanted to go all out, it could have just redrawn the entire uniform on Mulhern like it had previously done for countless other players, but maybe that was impossible because Peter McNab got his damn leg and glove in the way, so OPC had to find another solution. I’m actually surprised they didn’t just cut out Mulhern’s head from another photo and just paste it on Darryl Sittler’s Maple Leaf uniform-covered body or something.

You know, one day, a psychiatrist is going to look into some of these bizarre O-Pee-Chee moves and come up with some sort of explanation for this repeated lunacy.