Wow! Worst Whalers uniform ever!

In case you’re wondering, this is what the 1985-86 Hartford Whalers uniform looked like…

Nice, eh?

What made the old Hartford uniforms to awesome was the fact that the negative space between the blue tale and the green “W” formed a “H” for Hartford. You can see it perfectly in the bottom right corner of Dave Barr’s card. In a way, that great-looking logo is what makes Dave Barr’s uniform so God-awfully crappy; you can compare the right Whalers logo and the wrong Whalers uniform oh-so-easily. I mean, the logo on Dave’s chest is so damn crooked you can’t even see the “H”. The way the white is placed reminds me of a mouth full of crooked teeth. If anyone out there has any suggestions of what Dave’s amateurish logo looks like, feel free to drop me a line.

As usual, there was a reason for the airbrushing scandal that you have seen above. Dave had played the entire 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons in St. Louis, and he was coming off a then career-high of 51 points, but just two games into 1986-87, he was traded to Hartford, where he proceeded to endure the worst season of his career, to the tune of six points in 30 games. The Whalers sent him to Detroit, where his career was revived, but unfortunately for Dave, O-Pee-Chee published its ’86-’87 set right around the time he was in Connecticut, and that is why his rookie card turned out the way it did.