1974-75 TOPPS/O-PEE-CHEE #24 JACQUES LEMAIRE

NOT WITH THE BUFFALO SABRES

At first glance, the doctored photo of Lemaire is convincing enough that you might believe he did play for the Sabres. But this card is as close as he ever got to playing for any team other than the Montreal Canadiens during his 12-year, Hall of Fame career. Why they painted over Lemaire’s Habs jersey remains a mystery, but the best guess is that someone on the Topps team got their Jacques mixed up. The Sabres acquired goaltender Jacques Caron from the Vancouver Canucks in September of 1974, right around the time that the cards were being prepared. It’s likely that someone misunderstood and rushed to update Lemaire as though he’d been the one dealt to Buffalo. The error was so egregious that it was weaved into the mythology of a make-believe player. The card-back bio on Panini’s 2010-11 Score Rookie & Traded tribute to Taro Tsujimoto, the fake Japanese star who was drafted as a gag by the Sabres in 1974, suggests that the Canadiens were desperate to acquire the diminutive forward and had offered the established star to Buffalo as part of a deal that fell apart only after the Topps card was created. “We were batting ideas around over lunch one day as we were making up the details of Taro’s biography,” said Al Muir, who served as Panini’s hockey brand manager at the time. “Tying it in to the Lemaire error was supposed to be a fun inside joke, but what was really funny was when we had people ask if that was what really happened and we had to remind them that Taro didn’t actually exist.”