Weird hockey card #1: Martin Lapointe

Now that the Stanley Cup playoffs are over, we have a long summer ahead of us. The entry draft is next weekend, followed by the free agent signing period beginning on July 1. I'm already really bored.

I have a few projects in mind for the summer to break the monotony of "and so and so signed a contract with such and such team for whatever whatever years at yadda yadda dollars." One potential project will involve the participation of bloggers for other teams.

One other project, which I'll introduce tonight, is very much inspired by an excellent series over at IPB called "Project Bicycle Spoke". Basically, they bought a bunch of 07-08 hockey cards, put them in a shoe box, draw one out at random and write a little bit about the player (and the card). This is a very entertaining series, and I highly recommend reading them all. IPB has become a daily read for me, and I suggest you all do the same.

For a few months, I've been buying these hockey card sets at Target that have four packs of cards from the 06-07 season, and also 100 completely random cards. These "random" cards are really really random. They're not just "assorted", they're random. Most are from a name-brand card company, and most are from at the very earliest the late 80s, but some are either from an off-off-off brand or they're more than 30 years old, or both. I've bought four of these sets, and to illustrate the "randomness" of it, one set had three of the exact same Eric Weinrich card from the 1990-91 season. This card is worth about 25 cents.

Anyway, there's usually one card in every set that makes me laugh. I'm going to try to share these with you. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner, so I have to take a photo of the card, but I hope you enjoy. I don't know what I'm gonna call this project, or even if I'm going to give it a name, but without further ado, here is a very strange Martin Lapointe card:


First off, this is from a card company called "Arena Holograms", which I've never heard of. I guess this card had something to do with the entry draft that year. Presumably, they had everyone who was projected to be a first round pick pose for one of these cards wearing a tuxedo and a hockey stick. It looks like they had him pegged to be the #8 pick, but he actually went as the #10 pick to the Detroit Red Wings. At first, I thought the card was funny, but the more I look at it, the more I think it's creepy.
Despite the comparisons that were made to Mario Lemieux, Lapointe never really made it big in the NHL. He's still playing, and he's a player that everybody knows, but he never had the offensive output that people were expecting from him.

I've looked this card up in several databases, and nobody has it listed. At all. AFter a little bit of research, I found out that this was the first and only year that this series of cards was produced. Apparently, the #1 card in that series was a hologram of Pat Falloon, who went with the #2 pick to the Sharks, right behind Eric Lindros. Later on, RBH will bring you a goofy card featuring the very same Pat Falloon.

As an aside, that 1991 draft was pretty packed. Ray Whitney was the first pick in the second round (23rd overall), and there were some really good players deep into the third round.