1981-82 OPC Reboot: Intro and Bruins

  I made an earlier post where I lamented about the poor picture selection by OPC in the early 1980s sets.  In the 1981-82 set, there are 33 goalies.  Of those 33, 22 are not even wearing a mask.  The set is full of the dreaded warm-up skate picture.  The early 80s was a interesting time for the goalie mask.  There was a brief few years when you could find goalies with the old full face mask, a helmet and cage, and also the early masks and cage, which 99% of goalies use today.  It's a shame that OPC never made an effort to capture this era on cardboard.  So I set a goal; to update all 33 cards with better pictures.
  In the end, it was harder than I expected.  For some goalies it was very difficult to find an upgraded picture that was a high quality.  Some goalies in the set are obscure and only have a few, or even one picture, in existence of them in the corresponding teams uniform.  I also tried to avoid using pictures that come from another OPC card and, if possible, pictures used by the guy selling homemade cards on eBay.  There are a few cards that I had to either pick a low-res picture, or no picture at all.  There's one card, if I choose to post it, will be black and white.  That's the reason why I call this a Reboot and not Remastered.

Boston Bruins

Rk         Player Pos Age GP  W  L  T  GA   GAA SO  MIN  GPS
1    Rogie  Vachon   G  35 53 25 19  6 168  3.34  1 3021  9.9
2       Jim  Craig   G  23 23  9  7  6  78  3.68  0 1272  3.6
3     Marco  Baron   G  21 10  3  4  1  24  2.84  0  507  2.0
       Team Total         80 37 30 13 270  3.38  1 4800 15.4

The Bruins only had one goalie make it into the 81-82 set.

1981-82 OPC #10 Rogie Vachon

  Rogie Vachon had 16 OPC base cards, not including subsets, made of him during his career.  Every single one, other than 1976-77, has him unmasked, either in a pose or a warm-up shot.  He had a much cooler Bruins mask than in the card I made but I couldn't get a decent picture of it.  I give my card the win in this reboot.

 Bonus Bruins

1981-82 OPC Jim Craig

  Jim Craig only had one card made of him during his NHL career.  It was a 80-81 head shot that included the top of a airbrushed Bruins jersey.  After his 1980 Miracle performance, Craig played four games with the Atlanta Flames before being traded to the Bruins for a 2nd round pick and 3rd round draft picks.  The player the Flames picked in the 3rd round would win 2 Stanley Cups and a Conn Smthye during his career.  Craig only played 23 games with the Bruins, all in the 1980-81 season.

1981-82 OPC Marco Baron

  Marco Baron never had a rookie card.  I covered Baron's career extensively in an earlier post.

  That's one team down, 20 to go.