Sur glace.

I am on something of a hockey bender.

The Olympics is part of that, sure; but it’s that time of year anyway. Before the Olympics, I went to see college hockey. After the Olympics, there will be the NHL. And all winter there’s been snow and ice and snapping cold here in eastern Pennsylvania — very much hockey weather.

Somebody was kind enough to scan in the 1976 O-Pee-Chee set of hockey trading cards and post them all on Flickr. As part of my hockey jag, I’ve been enjoying them tonight. You don’t have to be a hockey fan to appreciate some of the faces and poses — some timeless, some firmly of the Seventies.

Here are some of my favorites. To respect the owner’s rights, I won’t copy them here. But each link should open in a new window, so you can check out the pix without having to leave my gripping commentary.

Allons-y:

– This pose is so metal.

– Know what today’s sports cards need? More flesh wounds.

– Something tells me Ernie Hicke‘s sartorial style was wasted on St. Paul. (Gary Smith’s, too; there’s more than a little Glenn Frey in that photo.)

– Ed Van Impe looks as though he’s been playing since 1938 and has seen literally everything that can possibly happen on a hockey rink.  (“Did I tell you about the time the linesman’s dog came running onto the ice and blocked a shot?”)

– Simon Nolet, meanwhile, looks like a former hockey star turned junior high school science teacher who terrorizes the kids every year in the students-vs.-faculty hockey game.

– With his unfortunate hair, his lopsided grin and the glint in his eye, Tim Jacobs could have played a member of a homicidal motorcycle gang in a slasher B-movie set in Quebec.

– Similarly, I’m glad that’s not a chainsaw in Larry Goodenough‘s hands.

– These three guys, in contrast, look like some sort of Canadian hoser-humor vaudeville act.  (“Tonight at the Sherbrooke Theatre: Les Trois Canadiens, performing their nationally famous routine, ‘It’s A Beauty Night for Hockey, Eh?’ “)

– Rod Seiling seems quite pleased with the airbrush job on his jersey; Michel Plasse, less so. (It is possible, I suppose, that those are practice jerseys.)

– I imagine slapshots clanking harmlessly off the frosted hair-helmet of Garry Unger. It’s easy to set a record for consecutive games played when your hair is impermeable to assault or injury.

– John Bednarski did radio and TV for my hometown Rochester Amerks for many years. In this pic, he looks like an 11-year-old youth hockey hotshot whose dad, the coach, has just pulled him off the ice for hotdogging.

– Dallas Smith saw something in the basement of Boston Garden that he doesn’t tell anybody about.

– Playing a sold-out Madison Square Garden was the highlight of Ralph Klassen‘s career as Peter Frampton’s keyboard player, as well as Bert Wilson’s tenure as ABBA’s touring bass player.

– Dave Hrechkosy, meanwhile, looks like the frontman of a power-pop band from Long Island that’s trying to decide whether to take that major-label offer.

– With his mustache, long hair and somewhat beefy look, Jocelyn Guevremont bears — at least to my eyes — a passing resemblance to Chicago’s Terry Kath. (Kath was fond of wearing hockey jerseys onstage, which probably contributes to the resemblance.)

– I could also see a touch of the young, deer-in-the-headlights Brian Wilson in Richard Nantais, and the tiniest hint of Neil Diamond in Doug Favell.

– If Rod Gilbert never did ads for men’s underwear, it wasn’t any fault of his own.