Just scanning some of my old hockey cards & got to the 1997-98 UD Ice set.
The fronts are clearly (no pun intended) horizontal. However, on the backs the player stats & info is in a vertical orientation, while the remnant "see-through" picture of the player is still horizontal.
IMHO, the information gets priority for ease of reading, rather than having a properly aligned, reverse-image with sideways text.
Any thoughts? Thanks,
Kurt
p.s. did just notice that the card numbers are horizontally aligned...