I've been watching a few hockey games lately. It's my favorite winter sport to watch, though like many other sports it seems to get harder and harder each year to keep up with players changing teams, but that doesn't make the game less enjoyable to watch. Since I'm in a hockey frame of mind, I thought I'd pull out a random set that hasn't seen the light of day in quite some time - the 1993 Upper Deck McDonald's NHL All Star set.
Produced for McDonald's of Canada, the set is the usual Upper Deck quality. Nice action shots and high quality photos are the norm. The set is split between 13 Campbell conference all-stars and 14 from the Wales conference. Why does the Wales conference have that extra player? We'll never know.
Here are your starting goalies from each conference. I'd give the edge to Roy, but Casey kept the North Stars in many games during their final season.
I like this photo of Brett Hull. What happened to his helmet? No matter, he's got great hockey hair.
The back side of the card in both English and French, because it's Canada. You'll also notice that little maple leaf on the McDonald's logo and the card number has the McD prefix.
According to TCDB, these holographic cards were randomly inserted in the 4-card packs. There are 6 total in the set, and apparently I'm missing #4 - Ray Bourque. Maybe he slipped out in another box somewhere, but just in case, I better track another one down.
The checklist is very Canadian-ish and according to TCDB this is a shortprint. The Great One is an obvious miss in this set and if I remember correctly, the Magnificent one missed most of this season due to various injuries and ailments but they still managed to include him in the hologram subset.
I can appreciate the all-star focus, which means most of these players would have been recognizable back then but overall I find the set to be somewhat blah. Maybe it's because I don't read French and I'm not fond of the vertical All-Star stripe on the right. Though the holographic inserts add a little panache to the set, which is greatly needed in my opinion, I'll still keep this in the collection if only because I remember watching most of these players.
Cool set. I didn't really dive into hockey cards until a year or two later... so this set flew under the radar. That being said... I recognize ever single name on the checklist. These days I'm lucky if I can name five current San Jose Sharks (and they're my favorite team).
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