I smiled all night....

This was Glorious.





actually, this was nothing compared to the celebration in my living room. I hope my insurance deductable is low.....

He's Big, He's Bald....

He's Alex Auld.
Alex played last season with Montreal, before signing in the offseason for his second stint in Ottawa. I sent two 8x10's and two cards to him c/o the Senators. Alex was kind enough to sign and return all four items.

During his one year with the Habs, there was defenceman Hal Gill at 6'7", Alex at 6'5" and then Carey Price at 6'4". You know your team has issues when two of the three biggest guys on the team are your goalies. Thankfully, Jacques Martin and his smurf patrol are gone... and Randy Cunneyworth did his best to increase size and toughness.

That's Roman Hamrlik (#44) helping out Alex.... Roman is having a pretty good playoff series with Washington right now.

Both cards I sent were from 2009-10 OPC. The Update card...

and his regular base card.

Thanks Alex!!! And good luck to you wherever you end up playing next season.

Playoff Hockey.

One of my local card shops decided to hold a playoff hockey fantasy pool. To keep it simple, buy 5 packs of 2011/12 Score hockey, crack 'em open, pick 10 skaters and a goalie from your newly opened packs, et Voila. Instant fantasy team.

Of course the sheer randomness of it all leads to some rather unsightly teams.

For posterity, I'll show you my team, and we can all get a good laugh together.

From the L.A vs Vancouver 1st round matchup, I have Kings sniper Anze Kopitar....

 and Mike Richards. It goes downhill from here.

 Vancouver penalty kill specialist Sammy Pahlsson

 Detroit vs Nashville.... Henrik Zetterberg

 Philly vs Pittsburgh... Jaromir Jagr. 20 years ago, this was THE guy to pull. Now? Meh... he's still pretty good.

 and Matt Cooke. Too bad Penalty minutes doesn't count.

 Sharks vs. Blues... Logan Couture

 and Rangers vs Senators... Milan Michalek

 and Matt Carkner. Yes. Matt Carkner. Again, too bad about penalty minutes.

 D man Marc Staal. He'll probably tie his brother Eric in playoff scoring.

 my netminder is Henrik Lundqvist, complete with large crease, straight out of the pack. DAMN those pack searchers!!!!

The only other eligible players I pulled was skater Joel Ward of the Capitals, and goalie Antii Niemi of the Sharks.
Everyone else was off golfing and not eligible. Around 42 people entered... I'll let you know how I finish.

Any predictions????

The Man.... Jimmy Mann

That's right. You heard me. Jimmy Mann.

Some of you may not be familiar with Mann. He was the Winnipeg Jets (the Phoenix Coyotes Jets, Not the Atlanta Thrashers Jets.) first ever draft pick when they joined the NHL in 1979. The four WHA franchises were not treated well upon entry into the league, and they were given the last four picks of each round. Winnipeg chose Mann out of Sherbrooke 19th overall. He finished his career with 293 games played, 10 goals, 20 assists and 895 penalty minutes.

Quebec then took Michel Goulet 20th. Oops. Other players taken after Mann was chosen include Kevin Lowe, Mats Naslund, Dale Hunter, Neil Broten, Guy Carbonneau, John Ogrodnick, Glen Anderson and some dude named Messier. Oops.

There were a lot of oops by a lot of teams that year.

Jimmy was ranked 17th overall by NHL scouting going into that draft. He had just finished a season in which he score 35 goals, 47 assists for 82 points in 65 games for Sherbrooke. He also recorded 260 penalty minutes. One part of his game translated into the NHL, another part didn't.

I picked up this auto from ITG's Enforcers set online for .99 cents with free shipping. A steal.
As far as regular issue cards, Jimmy had three during his playing days. His '80/81 OPC rookie....

How many rookies can you think of that got their picture as Number One on a league leader card? Not a rookie leaders... but representing the entire league.
Smile Jimmy!

He's with some fine company... check out those guys from the WHA... Holmgren, Ruskowski etc..

Jimmy's last regular card.

After retirement in 1989, Jimmy became involved in the NHL Oldtimers team. For those of you unfamiliar, it consists of former players (greats, and not so greats) who travel around from coast to coast playing games against local police teams or all star squads with all proceeds going to a local charity.

Among the current participants are Guy Lafleur, Marcel Dionne, Charlie Simmer and Bryan Trottier.

But can imagine, being a local guy, getting to lace up against these former NHL'ers, and facing a line consisting of Jimmy Mann, Chris Nilan, Dennis Polonich, Gord Gallant and Larry Melnyk???

It's time to go for a canoe ride boys!!!

If you go to one of these games, you're in for a treat.

Oldtimer's Hockey.

Anyways... if I have a point in all of this rambling... it's to stop and take a look at those "no name commons" you may pass over when looking through your sets. There's a story you're missing.

Upper Deck Series Two Case Break

I took part in, like the title says, an Upper Deck Series Two case break last Friday. Normally I shy away from these things, but I hadn't started to collect the set yet, so I figured why not?

200 card set, plus 50 short print Young Gun rookies.
The team that I was assigned?
Columbus Blue Jackets. Now you know why I shy away from these things.

 I actually did okay though. So no complaints. The Jackets have a young team, with rookie Ryan Johansen leading the way. Unfortunately, UD featured star Rick Nash in Series One, and Jeff Carter in Series Two. Jeff Carter is now in L.A. Too bad for me.
No autos for me, but as you can see, two relic cards. The wrong rookie one though.

 A few canvas inserts, like Jeff Carter ...

 and Antoine Vermette. Love that shot.

 A couple of MVP inserts. I love this set. I have no idea why. I'll miss it next year.
Jeff Carter and...

 a Ryan Johansen black MVP rookie.

 I got something like four of these Jeff Carter Victory cards...

 and another four of the Ryan Johansen Victory rookies.

I traded one to the dude next to me for one of his Gabriel Landeskog Victory rookies.

 Another three Jeff Carter OPC update cards...

 and of course his OPC Update Retro card. UD used the same picture for this one. BOO! Bad Upper Deck.

 I got three of Ryan Johansen's OPC Update short print rookies... traded one for....

this beautiful Louis Leblanc OPC Update rookie.

 Like Carter, I also got the retro short print parallel of Ryan Johansen's rookie. Different picture. Better.

 I only got one Ryan Johansen Young Gun, and I traded it for Louie Leblanc's Young Gun.

 I also got the Young Gun's short print checklist. I traded it for half a dozen cards including a Brian Gionta canvas card...

 A rogie Vachon Heroes card

 a Jean Beliveau heroes card....

and three cards I already put into binders and didn't scan. Oops.

Plus, I got a complete base set of cards #251-450. Which was the main reason for doing this. More fun than buying the set for $15 at the show next week.

All in all it was a fun break, although it was weird to be in a case break where no one wanted to trade teams before hand. There was only one trade. Odd.

Oh, and the dude who had the Washington Capitals? Yeah... an Alexander Ovechkin Rookie buyback autograph. A nice little $700 card right there. Thanks for coming out.