Good Doggie...

Mr dogfacedgremlin from The Real DFG was kind enough to send over a trade package awhile ago. We've been sending stuff back and forth for awhile now, but this one was a wee different. Apparently dfg cleaned out his garage or something. Inside the box he sent, were three other boxes. Two, four hundred count boxes which I haven't touched yet, and another box modified to hold top loaders. For this post, I'll touch on a few of the cards in that box... we'll get to the other two boxes later.

You may sense a theme in theses cards... just a heads up.

 Carey Price insert from '08/09 Upper Deck

 These cards are sexy. Game breakers and Stars of the game from '08/09 Upper Deck Victory.

 Face of the Franchise from '09/10 Upper Deck

 and a Jaroslav Halak red parallel

 A Carey Price '10/11 Certified base card...

 and it's red parallel version /699

 Some guy you may remember.... Patrick Roy. Perhaps the best of all time... I waver on this daily. Always a great debate regardless. Roy, Dryden, Vezina, .... Good times.

 our current Captain, Brian Gionta.

 You may be thinking what the hell??? But Kari Lehtonen here is an example of the 20 or so cards DFG sent towards my set completion. Soon......

 A Carey Price Netminders insert from '10/11 Upper Deck.... and then some brand new cards for the 2011/12 season.

 
Both the red parallel and regular base Carey Price

again the same for sniper Mike Cammalleri

 only the Red parallel for Mr Subban

 and then some regular base towards my team set... Lars Eller

 leading scorer Tomas Plekanec

and Andrei Kostitsyn...

I'll start to dig into those other boxes soon... it's like Xmas... except it's 30 degrees out.....

It's been a long time...

I get distracted easily. To some of you this is not a surprise. You may even suffer along with me. It's odd because outside of this hobby, I'm very focused and efficient. But as for collecting little pieces of cardboard, I'm all over the map. I need help.

One of the downsides of being so scatter brained is that certain parts of my collection get ignored for awhile. One of those parts was my hockey individual player collections. I have binders going for Carey Price, P.K. Subban (just started that one) Chris Nilan and Lyle Odelein. And I may start one for Larry Robinson. Still debating that one.

While I have added a lot of new cards to my current players, Price and Subban, I have neglected my retired players, Nilan and Odelein.

A quick trip to ebay town rectified that in short order. I actually lucked out. I found one seller with two cards I wanted. For $3.50 shipped, I got not one, but two autographed cards of Lyle Odelein.

From the '96/97 Be a Player set...

 and the 2000/01 Be A Player set.

These on card autos are a great addition. And for under $2 each I cannot complain. Now if I could only find some relic cards of his.... especially the dual relic with Chris Nilan. That would be the end all be all card for me.

TTM Success - Henri Richard - The Pocket Rocket

Alright... somewhere this post got lost in blogger land. This autograph request was returned to me in March. I was sure I posted it... but there it is.. gone. So you get it now. Pretend the ink is still fresh okay? For me?

I wrote to Mr Richard, (and it is MR Richard) sending him a photo and a card, along with a fan letter bordering on worship.

For those of you that don't know, Mr Richard won 11 Stanley Cups as a player. More than any other hockey player in the history of the game.

Try and find a picture of Henri without him carrying the Stanley Cup. Go ahead. It's appropriate that Henri signed his name on the Cup. His name is engraved on it 11 times for real. Yeah...11 time Champion. How many guys even play for 11 seasons? How many teams have won the Cup 11 times? This guy used up both thumbs and still ran out of fingers. Henri has more rings than most trees.

Elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1979 after retiring in 1975. His number 16 was retired by Montreal in December of 1975, almost immediately after his retirement.

Mr Richard signed my photo and card, and included a signed postcard of his own.

Classy all the way. Thank you Mr Richard....

TTM Success! Don Cherry!

 I am waaaay behind in my TTM autograph posts. I got these from Don Cherry before the playoffs had started. Better late than never, right?
Anyways... I sent Don two photos and a card. Don signed one of the photos and my card, kept one of the photos, but then included a signed photo of his own, as well as two signed postcards.

 Dual auto! Coach and mascot!

 One of the postcards was a promo for Don Cherry's Rock 'em Sock 'em videos...

 and the other a reproduction of a very famous hockey photo from his days as coach of the Colorado Rockies.

As a side note... I wrote to Ron McLean at the same time as Don care of the same address at CBC sports.
I received these autos from Don in about 4 weeks. I'm still waiting on Ron McLean. 5 1/2 months later.

Thanks Don!!!

First new product of the year - 2011/12 Upper Deck Victory

 Hey look! An Upper Deck hockey product with Sidney Crosby on the wrapper!!! Sid is kind enough to tell us that there are 6 cards in each pack and you'll get a rookie in every other pack. What that means is every other pack, other than the one's that I buy.

Let's see what I got for my $1.
Nicklas Backstrom- Washington Capitals.

 Hmm. I could do without the massive Victory logo behind the player. The large logo on the bottom left is more than enough.

Dan Cleary of the Detroit Red Wings

 Let's see the back... different photo, that's very good. Are you listening Panini? UD does this on their .99 cent product. Monkey see, monkey do???
Career stats, also a big plus.

 Mike Fisher - Nashville Predators
I also don't like how the circle goes out into the border. It looks like the editor missed something.

 Kris Letang - Pittsburgh Penguins.

 David Krejci - of course I would get a Bruin. Why wouldn't I?

 and instead of a rookie, I pull a Game Breaker insert of Taylor Hall. Okay. Not bad. I can sell or more likely trade Taylor for something useful.

All in all not a bad product, although I will not be chasing this set this year. I'll still try and trade for all the Montreal cards... but not the whole set.

All of these are up for swap if any of you feel the need.

1974-75 Topps Card #10 - Gilles Gilbert

Card Features - Gilles Gilbert

 Card #10 of this set features one of the better goalies in the 70's. Boston Bruins starter Gilles Gilbert. Boston acquired Gilles from the North Stars for Fred Stanfield. All Gilles did his first year with the Bruins (the season just finished before this card was issued) is go 34-12-8 with a 2.95 GAA and 6 shutouts and lead them to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Then came the tenure of Don Cherry. Gilles and Don did not get along that well. According to Cherry, "And I used to give it to Gilbert pretty good, too. When we had shooting practice, I'd send all the goofy guys, the ones who fired high shots, up to Gilbert's end of the rink. The same guys, the ones who kept the shots low, went to Cheevers' end of the rink." (Toronto Star, December 30, 1984)
Cheevers being Gerry Cheevers, the other Bruins goalie at the time. Despite Gilbert being a superior goalie, Cherry played his favourite, Cheevers. Maybe Boston would've beat Montreal if Gilbert had played. But as it stood, Montreal beat Boston in the finals two straight years, leading to Don Cherry being fired.
Gilles was a free agent after the finals that year, and had offers from several teams, including Montreal after Ken Dryden's sudden retirement. But with Cherry no longer there, Gilbert re-signed with the Bruins and went 20-9-3 with a 2.73 GAA that year. Boston was so grateful that they traded him to Detroit. At that time, Detroit was one of if not the worst team in the league.
Gilles played 95 games for the Red Wings over three seasons going 21-48-16 with no shutouts before retiring in 1983.

Topps used virtually the same photo for Gilles in the '73/74 set as they did here in the '74/75 set. Substitute the black sweater for a home white one and voila.
Gotta dig the Love on the Ice cartoon.

oh, and Sal, if you're reading this.... his name is pronounced like Zhill Zhill-BEAR. :)