Jim Pettie played 21 games over 3 seasons for the Boston Bruins in the late 1970's. Those Bruins were excellent and they had solid goaltending in Gerry Cheevers and Gilles Gilbert in front of Pettie.
Pettie, nicknamed "Seaweed," earned a spot in Bruins history by being a major character in Open Net, George Plimpton's book, a sort of hockey version of his earlier best-seller Paper Lion. Pettie roomed with Plimpton, while the author was doing research for the book.
Pettie also has the distinction of being the first Boston goalie to start against Bruins legend Bobby Orr. This occurred during the 1976-77 season, when Orr was playing for the Chicago Blackhawks. Pettie and the Bruins won that contest.
A while back, I located Pettie and asked him to sign a puck for me. In his usual humor, he also wrote me a note explaining that he had his daughter roll teh puck at him and he stopped it. I now had one of the few pucks he ever stopped. That was a classic and classy gsture on his part. It ranks as one of my greatest autograph stories.
Pettie never appeared on a Topps (or OPC) card during his NHL career. Inspired by many of my fellow bloggers (okay, I stole the concept), I created a card for Pettie. The square picture opening made this an easy card to create, but I will still add that it turned out nicely. There are not many quality pictures of Pettie in uniform.
If you like hockey and reading, I am sure you will like Open Net. You will also learn a little about Pettie and I am sure you will like him, too. Until then, I hope you like his Card That Never Was.
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