Winnipeg author recounts the history of hockey’s kooky collectibles

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2015 (3288 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Forty years ago this NHL playoff season, the top-selling albums in Philadelphia were One of These Nights by the Eagles, Main Course by the Bee Gees and Let’s go, Flyers! — Champions Again by the Philadelphia Flyers.

According to He Shoots, He Saves — a new book about hockey collectibles written by Winnipegger Jon Waldman — Champions Again was a vinyl LP composed of play-by-play recordings of Flyers games from the 1974-75 season — a campaign that was capped off by the Broad Street Bullies’ second straight Stanley Cup title.

Waldman, whose last book, Got ’em, Got ’em, Need ’em (2011), focused on sports cards, says the Flyers album was one of the stranger things he encountered while conducting his research — just not the strangest.

“There was one guy I heard about, a retired firefighter, I think, who has a blue-and-white fire hydrant that he carts around in a wagon, asking (Toronto Maple) Leafs alumni to sign.” (Insert your own dog/fire hydrant/Maple Leafs joke here.)

He Shoots, He Saves isn’t a price guide so much as it is a sentimental look at what people collect and why — a theme that is made abundantly clear on the book’s dedication page where Waldman thanks his late uncle, Brian Fleishman, for getting him interested in hockey — and anything associated with the sport — in the first place.

“When I was a kid, my uncle had season tickets to the Jets and every so often he’d take me to a game or bring something back from a game for me,” says Waldman. “One time it was a game-used stick from Tony McKegney; I guess I could have played street hockey with it but I remember thinking at the time there might be some value to it down the road — and that I probably shouldn’t use and abuse it.”

During his teen years, Waldman continued to amass memorabilia such as commemorative coins, ticket stubs and pennants. The knowledge he gained about the value puck-heads place on pocket schedules and bobbleheads paid off in 2002 when he landed a job writing for Canadian Sports Collector magazine.

 

One afternoon during the 2003-04 NHL season, Waldman took part in a conference call with Martin St. Louis, then a star winger for the Tampa Bay Lightning. When it was Waldman’s turn to pose a question, he asked St. Louis what types of hockey-related treasures caught his eye, when he was a kid growing up in Laval, Que.

“He just started spouting off about his old (Wayne) Gretzky and (Mario) Lemieux cards and also, how pumped he was the first time he saw a hockey card with his image on it,” says Waldman, who has also written for Beckett Hockey Monthly and the Hockey News. “I could really hear the excitement in his voice. So every time I got a chance to speak to a player from then on, I’d try to ask that same sort of question. Most times the guys were like, ‘Great, I can finally talk about something besides the usual BS.'”

Waldman’s exchanges with past and present NHLers are included in He Shoots, He Saves. For example, Hockey Hall of Famer Ted Lindsay speaks about scrapbooks his mother put together for him, comprised of newspaper clippings from Terrible Ted’s playing days.

And although it occurred too late to make it into the book, one of Waldman’s favourite interviews was with Montreal Canadiens netminder Carey Price, who was only too happy to tell Waldman about his most cherished keepsake, when Waldman sat down with Price moments after a Jets-Canadiens game.

“He had just won so he was in a good mood and I asked him if there were any players who influenced him when he was growing up. He told me this beautiful story about how, when he was a kid, he met Ken Dryden at a fundraiser and worked up the nerve to ask Dryden for an autograph. He still has that piece of paper with Dryden’s signature on it tacked to a wall in his apartment, he said.”

The rest of He Shoots, He Saves revolves around what hockey-mad collectors covet most (arena remnants such as seats from the old Montreal Forum or Boston Garden top many fans’ lists), items associated with skaters the author refers to as “the trinity” (that would be Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr) and chapters on every NHL club, including many defunct franchises, with special attention paid to some of the most oddball, promotional giveaways ever staged.

In the book, Waldman uses the word “unique” to describe one souvenir in particular. To mark the Buffalo Sabres’ inaugural season, management gave every season ticket holder a genuine, Wilkinson sword that measured 80 centimetres in length with a razor-sharp, 70-cm blade. And here, Jets management deemed it inappropriate for fans to show up at a game with a helmet on their heads.

When it comes to hockey’s holy grail, that’s a no-brainer, Waldman says; it’s the jersey Paul Henderson wore during the 1972 Summit Series.

“After he scored the winning goal in that last game, Henderson gave it to one of the trainers as a gift. He didn’t think anything of it and he had no clue how priceless it would become, one day.” (In 2012, Henderson’s uniform landed a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive hockey jersey of all time, when it commanded $1.275 million at auction.)

Now that Waldman and his wife are expecting their first child, the 36-year-old has begun scaling back his collection.

“The reality is time evolves everything and you can’t keep everything, but I am still actively going after things associated with the current Jets,” he says. “We know we’re having a daughter and whether she becomes a hockey fan or not, I want to at least have the opportunity to say to her one day, ‘Here’s what Daddy got for you when Jacob Trouba and Mark Scheifele played in Winnipeg.'”

One last thing, Waldman already has a working title for his next book, which is Top 100 Things Winnipeg Jets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. Given the current playoff climate, the No. 1 entry — celebrating hockey at Portage and Main — may occur sooner, rather than later.

He Shoots, He Saves is available in bookstores and at Amazon.ca.

 

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca