I personally call it the Jerry Korab effect. It’s when a seemingly obscure common hockey card is the centre of a crazy bidding war on eBay resulting in the final winning bid being far beyond the actual value of the card. Of course, I call it the Jerry Korab effect because of a 1972-73 Korab card with terrible centering and corner wear that I had listed once. The Korab card was the apple of two bidder’s eyes and resulting in me making a fair amount more money off a common card than I was expecting.
Find Don Lever memorabilia on eBay, right now!
As I was running the through the eBay listings the other day, gathering data for the Vintage Hockey Cards Report eBay Hockey Card Price Guide, I came across a Don Lever rookie card that sold for $46.66! The seller claimed the card was nearmint to mint but it was not professionally graded. Although Lever was a pretty decent player and more recently has been pretty decent behind the bench, he is not even considered a semi-star by Beckett Hockey Monthly
Don Lever starred as a junior in the Ontario Hockey Association with the Niagara Falls Flyers. He played just two games with the team in 1969-70 but put in two fine seasons in 1970-71 and 1971-72. In his final season with Niagara Falls, Lever scored 61 goals and added 65 assists for 126 points. He was second in goals to Steve Shutt’s 63, fourth in assists and third in points behind Dave Gardner and Billy Harris who both had 129. Lever was awarded with the Red Tilson Trophy as the OHA’s most valuable player.
The Vancouver Canucks liked what they saw in Lever and took him third overall in the 1972 NHL Amateur Draft. Only Billy Harris and Jacques Richard were chosen above Don. He quickly became a regular with the Canucks the following season, 1972-73.
Lever played 1020 regular season games in the NHL with the Canucks, Atlanta / Calgary Flames, Colorado Rockies / New Jersey Devils and the Buffalo Sabres. Somewhat ironically, if he’d played one more season in the OHA, he would have been part of both sides of another relocated team as the Niagara Falls Flyers became the Sudbury Wolves in 1972-73.
Never the winner of a major NHL award, Lever won some team hardware with the Vancouver Canucks. In 1973-74, he won the Fred J. Hume Award as Vancouver’s unsung hero and was selected as the team’s Most Exciting Player. In 1975-76, he was honoured with the Cyclone Taylor Award and the Canucks most valuable player. He served as team captain in 1977-78 and 1978-79. Lever is still tenth all-time on Vancouver for most career points at 407. He totalled 680 over his entire NHL career.
The closest Don got to a Stanley Cup as a player was in 1980-81, the Flames first year in Calgary, when the Canucks made it to the semi-finals before losing to the Minnesota North Stars in six games. In his final season of professional hockey, 1986-87, Lever helped the Rochester Americans win the Calder Cup as the American Hockey League’s playoff champions. In 2006-07, he won the Calder again, this time as head coach of the Hamilton Bulldogs. He was head coach of the Chicago Wolves of the AHL in 2010-11 but that position has been taken by Craig McTavish for 2011-12.