1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Game 5 Bruins vs Rangers #54 1971-72 NHL Playoffs Stanley Cup Finals

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Game 5 Bruins vs Rangers #54 1971-72 NHL Playoffs Stanley Cup Finals Rangers heartbreak and Rangers hope live side by side on the 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Game 5 Bruins vs Rangers #54 1971-72 NHL Playoffs Stanley Cup Finals card, the night of May 9, 1972 when New York refused to die and beat Boston 3-2 at the Garden. The front shows the third-period drama unfolding above the yellow GAME 5 at Boston bar and the puck graphic listing RANGERS 3 BRUINS 2, and the reverse preserves the complete bilingual scoring summary in English and French with shots on goal and the Boston Garden attendance of 14,995. Wayne Cashman opened from Ken Hodge and Phil Esposito at 3:35 of the first period, Dale Rolfe answered for New York, and Hodge restored the Boston lead at 16:07, but the third period belonged entirely to the veteran Rousseau, who struck twice at 2:56 and again at 12:45 to turn the building quiet. The card records the goaltending battle in its shot summary too, with 38 Boston shots directed at the New York net while Boston faced 26 the other way. With the series now three games to two, the stage was set for the decisive Game 6 on Broadway, where Orr and the Big Bad Bruins finally closed out the Rangers and their famous 1940 championship drought storyline for one more summer. Game cards like this were among just six 1971-72 NHL Playoffs cards seeded into first-series packs of the 340-card checklist, a superb collecting idea that O-Pee-Chee repeated in spirit for years. The reverse is the Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back carrying the full game summary in English and French rather than a puzzle back, printed on classic tan stock. corner wear is light with slight softening at the upper left tip and a whitened touch at the lower right tip, the bottom edge near the lower left carries a trace of whitening along a short stretch, a tiny speck sits below the yellow bar near the lower left of the photo area, and centering is even to slightly right at approximately 55/45 left to right and 50/50 top to bottom. There are no creases, wrinkles or surface impressions of any kind. With such clean structures and only the faintest marks, a conservative raw grade of EX-MT 6 is warranted here. A dramatic closer to one of the most collected playoff subsets in vintage hockey. Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6