Inside the Den

We are officially in the dog days of August, and training camps are still three weeks away. What better time to get back to the roots of Nitzy's Hockey Den, those roots being my actual hockey den. When I initially began this blog it was to showcase some of the finer nicks and nacks of my collection. I thought I'd share a few of the more recent additions to my basement shrine.

Above is the oldest hockey card I own, a 1933 O-Pee-Chee of Maple Leaf, Harold "Baldy" Cotton. I picked it up a few months ago, and now am on the hunt for a good deal from one of the rare issued sets in the 1920's.
My WHA collection grows with a pair of Toronto Toros programs, the first featuring Gordie Howe with the Houston Aeros. Below has a great cover shot of Czech defector Vaclav Nedomansky. I've also got four of the seven WHA league guides and programs from Quebec, Calgary, Edmonton and Chicago.

This program encompasses two of the main components of my collection, old time Leaf stuff and the long gone Western Hockey League. Red Kelly is pictured on the cover of a 1963 Vancouver Canucks program. The thing is, the Canucks weren't even playing, The Leafs played the New York Rangers in an exhibition at the still standing Vancouver Forum on the Pacific National Exhibition grounds. I'm pretty sure Red Kelly himself didn't even travel to Vancouver for this game as he was in Ottawa on duty as a Member of Parliament.

As if to illustrate that I have "Non- Toronto" related paraphenallia in the den, below is another Canucks Western League program from the heyday of the long defunct professional circuit.
More to come from the den before we get back into the teeth of hockey history or looking ahead to the upcoming season.




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