Hockey Card Stories 2 by Ken Reid

Author:Ken Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2018-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

Blake Dunlop

1974–75 O-Pee-Chee #308

I just love these old poses. Here, Blake Dunlop is all smiles in what my old Highland Hockey School instructor Dave Wiesner used to call “hockey position”: stick on the ice (or in Dunlop’s case, the floor), body a little bent over, and head up. When you’re in hockey position, you’re ready for anything. In Dunlop’s case, it was a hockey card. Dunlop looks quintessentially ’70s in his No. 24 North Stars jersey, but it’s a number he never wore for the team except on this day. “It was my rookie year at training camp, and I think they just handed me a random sweater.”

Blake Dunlop arrived in Minnesota as a hotshot offensive prospect — maybe that’s why he got a card after playing in only 12 NHL games. Back in the day, you used to have to put in at least a season, in some cases quite a few, before you ended up on cardboard. Things were different for the former Ottawa 67. “At the time, I didn’t think that much about having a card. Hockey cards were always something special, but I wasn’t a huge collector back when I was a kid. To be honest, it didn’t really stand out at the time. It’s more memorable now. When I look back and see the different cards from different teams I played for, it’s something I appreciate more in hindsight.”

Unlike a lot of contemporary cards, the back of this one is just loaded with information. You couldn’t google Blake Dunlop in 1974, but thanks to this card, that didn’t matter. His bio gets right down to business: “Blake became one of the most sought after junior players in North America after scoring the fantastic total of 60 goals and 99 assists in his final season of amateur hockey.” Dunlop’s 159 points in 1972–73 set an OHL record for most points in a season, and it was a great way to cap off his four years in Ottawa. He left the 67’s with 365 points in 231 regular-season games. “It was a combination of having a good team and maturing a little bit at my level, in my fourth year of junior. I had played as a 16-year-old, which not too many guys did back then. Denis Potvin was a teammate of mine, Ian Turnbull too. So we had some good players and we had a good team. It just kind of escalated as things went on. Then I was at the top of the league in scoring.”

Dunlop says his stats improved because his Ottawa teammates caught on to what was happening with their fourth-year centre and they wanted in on the fun. He explains that he was always more of a playmaker but as the season wore on, the puck kept coming back to him. “I scored a lot of goals near the end of the season because everyone was cognizant of the fact that I had a chance to win the scoring title. I got a lot more goals towards the end of the season than I normally would have.

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