Ex-NHL player Dale McCourt was supposed to play for the Los Angeles Kings when he was awarded as compensation for the Red Wings signing of Rogatien Vachon. But he refused to play for L.A., getting a court injunction to prevent the trade, and so he ended up being retained by the Red Wings (full story here).
This all happened prior to the 1979-80 season, so when Topps issued a card of McCourt that year, he was wearing an L.A. Kings uniform--the result of some airbrushing and a pasted-on Kings logo (shown at right). Topps had anticipated that McCourt would go to the Kings (as he was supposed to do), and so figured they'd be ahead of the game by putting him in a Kings jersey. When the O-Pee-Chee version of the card came out (a few months later than the Topps card), it used the same photograph, but reverted back to the Red Wings layout, along with the phrase "Now with Red Wings".
McCourt is a player I became interested in because of his refusal to be "compensation" for his team trying to better himself. Those old free agency rules were totally messed up back in the day, even more so than today. So, I thought it would have been cool to give him a "proper" 1979-80 trading card--one that doesn't depict him as a King. The photo of McCourt spraying ice while he stops, along with the "Not with Kings" text kind of makes fun of both Topps and the Kings--kind of like "in your face"!