It's longtime Philadelphia Flyer star Bill Barber playing for Canada during the 1976 Canada Cup. It was an historic event -- the first true best-on-best hockey history. Well, sort of. The six teams in the tournament were the top six hockey nations in the world: Canada, the United States, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. But the Soviets for some reason chose to leave some of their best players at home. Barber was part of an unsurprisingly stacked Canadian roster that also included Bobby Clarke (the team captain), Bobby Orr (the MVP of the tournament), Phil Esposito, Bobby Hull, Guy Lafleur, Gilbert Perreault, Denis Potvin, Larry Robinson and Darryl Sittler. The coaches included Scotty Bowman and Don Cherry.
The six teams played a round-robin tournament that ended with the Canadians and the Czechs advancing to a best-of-three final. Canada won the first game 6-0. Canada jumped out to another lead in game two, but the Czechs scored two quick goals (one by Marian Statsny) to go up 4-3 with four minutes to go in the game. But Bill Barber scored a minute later to tie it up and force an overtime. And, of course, is the moment that this card commemorates.
What's neat about this is that Barber's goal isn't the famous one from that tournament. That honor belongs to Darryl Sittler, who scored the game-winner in the overtime that Barber's goal forced. Sittler's goal is right up there with the most famous goals in Canadian hockey history, only clearly behind Paul Henderson's winner in the 1972 Summit Series. Nice to see Upper Deck go off the board slightly with the choice for this card.
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