1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Lowell MacDonald #214 Masterton Season Pittsburgh Penguins

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Lowell MacDonald #214 Masterton Season Pittsburgh Penguins Some cards are worth owning because of the season that happened right after they were printed, and this is one of them. The 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Lowell MacDonald #214 Masterton Season Pittsburgh Penguins was issued just as MacDonald completed one of the great comeback stories in NHL history, and that context turns an unassuming Penguins card into something a collector can tell a story about. Born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia in 1941, MacDonald endured four knee operations that repeatedly threatened to end his career, spending long stretches out of the league and nearly retiring before Pittsburgh gave him another chance. In 1972-73 he responded with a breakout campaign, scoring at a pace nobody expected from a player written off by his own body, and he was awarded the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey. He went on to form part of the Penguins' most productive line of the mid seventies alongside Syl Apps Junior and Jean Pronovost, a trio that gave Pittsburgh genuine offensive credibility for the first time. The card itself shows MacDonald in the classic powder blue Penguins sweater in a leaning action pose, set against the bold red background that characterizes this portion of the 341 card Canadian set, and it sits in the harder to find high number series produced during the year of the Summit Series and the founding of the World Hockey Association. The reverse is a genuine Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, cream stock with orange panels, English and French text describing how he made a comeback in 1972-73 rather than undergoing a fifth knee operation, a cartoon panel noting a three goal game, and a complete NHL career record grid covering Detroit, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh with a Did Not Play Due To Injuries line that makes the story plain. It is a bilingual statistical back and not a puzzle back. the photos show a front with excellent red saturation, no creases, no wrinkles, and only the faintest surface handling visible in the red field, corners that are among the better ones on this sheet with light touch wear at the top left and bottom right and no significant rounding, minor edge chipping confined to a few flecks along the top and left borders, and centering that is slightly heavy to the left with a marginally wider bottom border than top. The back is bright with clean paper and no writing. The conservative estimate is set to account for the small corner touches and the mild left shift in the cut, both of which keep a professional grade from climbing higher. Grade Estimate: EX 5