1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Guy Lapointe #114 All-Star Montreal Canadiens

Description

1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Guy Lapointe #114 All-Star Montreal Canadiens A Hall of Fame defenceman, an All-Star subset design, and the dark grey Canadian stock that vintage O-Pee-Chee specialists actively hunt: the 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Guy Lapointe #114 All-Star Montreal Canadiens card delivers all three in one piece of cardboard. The front carries the striking '72-73 NHL All-Stars, East banner across a pale blue field, with a gold-outlined shield window holding a live game photo of Lapointe in the classic red Canadiens sweater, number five on his sleeve, driving up ice. It is one of the most attractive subset designs O-Pee-Chee ever produced and it displays beautifully alongside the rest of the All-Star run. Guy Lapointe earned his place on that First All-Star Team the hard way. The back of this card, printed bilingually in English and French as every O-Pee-Chee card of the era was, notes that he made the first All-Star Team the previous season, that he paced Montreal with 117 penalty minutes, and that his mobile style and puck-carrying ability are similar to Bobby Orr's, which was about the highest compliment a card back could pay a defenceman in 1973. His 1972-73 line reads 76 games, 19 goals, 35 assists and 54 points. Lapointe became the least publicized but arguably the most complete member of Montreal's legendary Big Three alongside Larry Robinson and Serge Savard, a trio that anchored the Canadiens dynasty of the mid-to-late seventies. He won six Stanley Cups in Montreal, represented Canada in the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993, with his number five eventually raised to the rafters at the Bell Centre in 2014. For Quebec collectors and Canadiens dynasty builders, his vintage All-Star cards are core inventory. This copy is the darker grey paper stock, the scarcer and more visually distinctive of the two 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee back variations, and the reverse is a genuine Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back with full French translation of the biography and the cartoon caption "Guy a un des lancers les plus durs dans la L. N. H.," plus "PRINTED IN CANADA" at the lower right. There are no puzzle backs in this set. The front shows light corner wear on all four corners with the most noticeable softening at the lower left, where a small amount of white shows through the red border. Edge chipping is present but modest, concentrated along the left border and the top edge where tiny white specks interrupt the red. Centering runs roughly 60/40 to the left and about 50/50 vertically, a common trait for this issue. The photo window itself is clean and free of scuffing, gloss is even across the surface, and there are no creases, wrinkles, dents or bends when the card is angled to the light. The grey reverse is unmarked with no writing, no gum stain and only faint handling toning at the extreme edges. Grade Estimate: EX 5