Dickie Moore 1931 - 2015

Another living legend has passed. The great Dickie Moore died earlier today at the age of 84.

Six Stanley Cups 1953, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960

Two Art Ross Trophies 1958, 1959

Elected to the Hall of Fame - 1974

#12 retired by Montreal - 2005

a son, a daughter, and a whack of grandkids left behind. Along with thousands of fans. One of the greatest ever. He will be missed.

Dickie Moore  January 6, 1931 - December 19, 2015

Pelle Lindbergh remembered

It was 30 years ago today that Pelle Lindbergh crashed his heavily modified Porsche 930 Turbo into a wall while driving under the influence of alcohol.

Pelle, 26, was coming off of a career year where he led the NHL in wins with 40, was voted to the First All Star team and won the Vezina trophy as outstanding goalie.

No one quite knows why he left a team function that day with two friends with a blood alcohol level of .24, over twice the legal limit in New Jersey where the accident occurred. According to friends and family, Pelle rarely drank. Certainly never to intoxication. But once was enough.

 Pelle was kept alive by machines long enough for his family to fly in from Sweden. His heart and several other organs were harvested for transplant.

O-Pee-Chee stopped the presses long enough to add a memorial banner onto his 85/86 card.

 

 It's always a touchy subject dealing with incidents such as drunk driving. Many people believe that someone shouldn't be memorialized for being stupid and almost killing others.
Some look past that and remember the person they were before. While I agree that Mr Lindbergh was stupid, careless, and selfish when he got behind the wheel after drinking.... I'll leave this debate for another forum, another time.


Instead, I'll memorialize the what might have been. The unrealized. A bright shining life snuffed out far too soon.

Pelle Lindbergh  24 May, 1959 - 11 November, 1985

You're Number One!!!!!

I don't think this is even possible with today's equipment.

$10,000,000.00

That's just what this guy....

 

 

donated to the Montreal Children's Hospital.

 

Haters gonna hate, but it's great to see the class of the organization be picked up and carried by the next generation.

Mr. Beliveau would be proud sir.

We're getting closer...

56 days until the season starts. And none to soon. Thankfully the Premier League just got underway and the NFL starts in four weeks. I've been going crazy with no sports to watch.

To get in the mood for the upcoming hockey season, I'll let you watch a little 5 on 5 line brawl.



Well that escalated quickly. Complete annihilation by Latvia. Kudos to the Yanks for even getting in there against them. They look fresh out of a gulag somewhere.

your Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2015 inductees.

Today was the announcement of the new inductees into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Or at least, the Hockey Hall of Very Good. The past few years, well, let's say the bar has been lowered to a more pc level. Or maybe little league level. You know, everyone gets a turn and a participation trophy at the end.....

 

But enough about that. Let's see who got in.

 

Nicklas Lidstrom - Defence  - Detroit Red Wings

 

Nick played his entire 20 year career with the Wings. A slam dunk no brainer for the Hall, he finished with 1564 GP  264 G  878 A  1142 PTS  +450.  Four Stanley Cups, seven Norris trophies, 1 Conn Smythe trophy and thirteen All Star teams.

The best defenceman since Larry Robinson retired. Period.

 

 

Sergei Fedorov - Right Wing  - Detroit Red Wings

(also played for Anaheim, Columbus and Washington) 

 Sergei played 18 years and 908 GP. He had 400 G  554 A  954 PTS and a +276   Add in three Stanley Cups, six All Stars, two Selke, one Hart and one Ted Lindsay award.
Another no brainer.



Phil Housley - Defence  -Buffalo Sabres
(he also played for the Flames, Jets, Black Hawks, Capitals, Devils, Blues and of course, Toronto)

 here is where the water gets murky.
Phil played 21 seasons, 1495 GP  338 G  894 A  1232 PTS  and a -53. Two All star games.
No Cups. No Norris. No trophies of any kind.
Not really sure why he got voted in.


Chris Pronger - St Louis Blues
(also played for the Whalers, Oilers, Ducks, Flyers, Coyotes???)

 Chris has played 18 years and counting. I say counting, because he is still an active player. Who by the way got traded to the Arizona Coyotes yesterday. And he's now in the Hall of Fame.
Nice.
This is everything that is wrong with the NHL all wrapped up into one. An active, but injured player who hasn't laced up the skates in three years gets traded on Sunday and elected to the Hall of Fame on Monday.
But I've said it before. If you want to be elected to the Hall, just go work for the NHL head office. The good ole boys club will put you in.


Angela Ruggiero - U.S.A. National team.

I can't find any of Angela's cards in any of my boxes right now, let alone here rookie, so settle for a promo shot instead. I think her RC is from '01/02.... but I could be wrong.
Click on her name to go to her website and learn more about her.

So there you have it.
Thumbs Up - Lidstrom, Fedorov, Ruggiero
Thumbs Down - Housley
The Big Raspberry - Pronger

What say you?

The man, the myth, the legend.

Apparently the NHL awards ceremony was last night or the night before. I say apparently because I have no idea. Did anybody actually watch it on tv???? Seriously.

 

The awards went exactly as predicted, save one.

 

Devan Dubnyk won the comeback player of the year award. No surprise. good for him.

 

Aaron Ekblad won the rookie of the year award. I called that one months ago, although no one believed me.

 

Local player Jiri Hudler won the Lady Bing trophy as most gentlemanly player.

 

the shocker of the evening is that Erik Karlsson won the Norris trophy as best defenceman. Wow. Apparently the voters didn't watch anyone else play. Drew Doughty should be pissed right about now. So should PK Subban and Duncan Keith. And Mark Giordano. And.............

 

Carey Price won everything else.

 

That's the Jennings, Vezina, Hart, and Ted Lindsay trophies in front of him.

Unfortunately, in order to win the Stanley Cup, Carey will have to work on his goal scoring in the off season. Without improvement there, he has no chance.

Denis says, "Trade me right now!"

Well, okay. He says a bit more than that as most of us know. Forgive the poetic license, kids are reading this.
Let them ask their parents what Denis really says....

Today marks a new feature here on the old blogs. I say plural, because I'll also be doing this on Waxaholic, only with baseball cards. If you're here, and not there, you probably like hockey cards.
Nice how life evens out like that.

I need to start to do more trading. (Don't we all?) Busting wax is great, but the products out right now are, well, sub par at best.
Okay, they blow.
Rather than focus on a negative, I'll focus on a positive. Something new I'm trying.

I saw on another blog among the hundreds out there where someone posts a card, and asks you to trade for that card. If no one does, he adds another card , and another, etc... until someone bites and claims the pile.
I like that. I'm going to gank that. Only to avoid copyright issues from whomever is doing it that way, I'll add my own spin.

So here we go. The first additions to the Trade me right now pile.

 a 1964-65 Parkie Tall Boy Paul Henderson. Settle down though.... it's from the 94/95 reprint set.

 Wayne Gretzky from National Hockey Card Day packs a few years ago.

and of course a 2008/09 Artifacts Vesa Toscala


three cards. (see? nothing like that other blog)

THE RULES.

okay, they're not rules per se.... just what I'd like to happen.
Claim the pile in the comment section, then email me letting me know you want to swap.

WHAT I WANT IN RETURN

cards. Duh. Preferably off of my want list. The link is on the right hand side of the blog. You can send me one card (okay) or you can send me twenty cards (YAY!). But let's try to keep this at a PWE level.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU HAVE NOTHING I WANT?

if you really want the cards but do not have anything off of my lists, I'm always looking for cards for my player binders. Carey Price, PK Subban, Adam LaRoche, ..... wait. Adam LaRoche? Yes. I will take baseball cards in exchange for hockey, and I will take hockey in exchange for baseball. Mix and match folks. We're all friends here.
Send me an email, we'll work something out easy peasy.

Diving into the deep end...

Stuck at home, sick like you wouldn't believe. Sinus congestion like a submarine that's gone too deep. Of course, I still had to get up early, drive across the city, and mow the front and back lawns of my wife's grandmother before it rained today.
She just had surgery last Thursday... fighting cancer. For the second time.
Yeah, she wins. I'll take the cold.

In between that and napping, I thought I might put up a couple of cards I purchased at the last card show I attended in Edmonton.
While the show was smaller and more focused than I would have liked, I still managed to come home with a nice haul.

This was my first purchase. I had barely walked in the hall when a buddy of mine flagged me over. He never sells at the local shows, but wanted to give it a go at this one.

Here's what he had for me...

that's a beauty right there. Numbered to his jersey number, good, clean auto. He wanted $20 for it. So I caved. Now that the whole world finally agrees with me that Carey is the best goalie around, his cards are doing up in price faster than our city taxes.
How he had this and not showed it to me during any of the last 100 trade nights we've seen each other is beyond me.

I hardly ever buy cards that expensive, but every once in awhile it's nice to add a significant piece to the binder.

Another local guy waved me over to his booth. He's never set up at any of the local shows, but I've seen him 3-4 times at a local trade night.

He had this one prominently displayed. He asked if he had it priced right, knowing that I was a Habs guy.

He had it priced at $20. I then showed him what I just bought for $20. His face kinda fell a bit when he realized how overpriced he was. I told him to put $10 on it and hope to get $5. After all, it was only a jersey card. And around here, jersey cards aren't worth spit. Try trading them. I dare you.

He asked if I had it already or not to which I replied no. He said if I would pay the $5, I could have it.

Whoops. Kinda painted myself into a corner on that one.

Okay, $5 it is. And now it's mine.

My budget was $100 for cards at this show and five minutes in, 25% of that was gone. Time to slow down.

A Journey 35 Years In the Making.

A long time ago in a frozen land far, far away, a boy undertook a mission that, unbeknownst to him, would take 35 years to complete.

But complete it he did.

 

The 1979/80 OPC hockey set was the very first set I bought packs for. I remember them vividly. I remember when my dad would come home and plunk down 8-10 packs that he brought home for me. Man, those were the days.

Tearing open the wax. The gum was horrible, even then. Looking at all of the cards. Letting out a whoop for joy every time I found a card I hadn't seen before. Or one from my favourite team. (No one cared about rookie cards then. No one. They weren't even a thing then.)

 

I completed the set a couple of times. Yes, it's Gretzky's rookie year. Yes, I have several of them. But it was the set that I was after. Even then. The completism. (yes, that is a word. For us set collectors, anyways.)

And part of that, remember there was no internet, no smart phones, no tablets, was keeping track of your progress.

But the card companies knew that. They even included cards within the set to help you along your way.

We called them checklists.

And not the checklists you see today. those mamby pamby things barely deserve the name. These checklists had little boxes beside each name for you to..... well, check off. Thus the name. (Yes. Check them off. You heard me. We wrote on our cards. WROTE! WITH PENS! Heresy!)

 

The 79/80 OPC hockey set went all out with checklists. There were three set checklists in the set. In a 396 card set, that meant 132 cards listed on each card, 66 on each side.

AND.

They included a team checklist card for every team in the league. Normally that would be a team photo on the front, with the corresponding checklist on the back.

But 79/80 was a special year. The NHL was absorbing four new teams from the now defunct WHA.

Edmonton, Hartford, Quebec, and Winterpeg, I mean, Winnipeg were all now part of the NHL.

 

I took pretty good care of my cards, and when I looked through my sets, only a scant handful needed upgrading to become NrMT/MT sets.

That part was easy.

 

It was the checklists that weren't so easy. The reason?

 

Here you see the front of the card that eluded me for 35 years.

 

 

And here is what the back looked like on the average card that I've looked at over that time. Including all of mine. Yeah, not only did I mark off the ones in my sets, but my duplicate ones too....

And apparently I wasn't the only one. Card after card I knocked off my list, save this one. Card #81.
Every time I found an unmarked one, it was either graded, or had a ridiculous price tag. Or both. $15 for a checklist??? Pack sand.

But I found one. The front scan is above, this is the clean unmarked back. Although my scanner cut off a bit of the border. It is nicely centered.

All for $3. Done. Thank you for being fair Mr Card Show Seller Sir.


Now there are those of you who are turning up your collective noses right now. Marked checklists are beautiful! You cry...
Well I agree. But most of the public doesn't. So I needed to do this.

However.

While I now have minty fresh unmarked checklists in my set, I still have all of my hand marked checklists from back then in those same pages. That way everyone is happy. Especially me.

Flames all around us...

Not much to say really. The latest card offerings since Upper Deck flagship came out have been.... bleh to say the least.

Went to a large, well, large for this area, card show last weekend. If I get around to scanning the cards I'll post on that later.

 

So for now, I'll show off a couple of ttm returns I've received in the past little while. Both Calgary Flames related. I'm all about themes ya know.

 

Goaltender Jonas Hiller kindly signed three pics and a card for me. One for each of his teams...

 

Anaheim Ducks

 

Calgary Flames

and of course Switzerland in the last Olympics.

oh, and a card sans mask in case you were wondering what young Jonas looked like.

and the future of the Flames. Mr Franchise, Sean Monahan.

Sean is not known for his penmanship.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the returns.

Has anybody else been testing the through the mail waters? Any successes? Failures? Stories?

How to turn a Diamond King into a Pop Up.

 

I don't really know how it came about... but Ryan Cracknell and I just completed a trade that sent a stack of baseball his way, and hockey mine.

 

I sent over 15 minty fresh Donruss Diamond Kings from various years, along with a few 2015 Topps Series 1, in exchange for some OPC inserts from the past few seasons. All sets that I'm working on.

 

First, some Pop Ups that of course, don't pop up. Or down. Or pop period.

 

 

then a couple of mini "V" series

and finally some OPC rookie Update cards that are only found in packs of Upper Deck. Yeah. Like that makes sense.

But wouldn't you know it....

All three of these...

are cards I already had. There was a failure to edit the checklist. Oops. Like that's never happened before.
Oh well, into the trade box they go.

Thanks Ryan.

10 for 10

You know the story. We've all been there. There's a card show. You want to go. But. You have little time, and even less cash.

So you go for it. In and out. Not the burger joint. And not what she said.

Hit up a couple of tables with lotsa boxes and even more sale signs.

 

The results? 10 cards for $10.

 

Here we go.

 

 

I've been after this card since I found out it existed about a year after it came out in '08.

 

 It's a SP. I found it in a binder of Habs cards that he wanted $50 for. The only card I needed was this one, and a deal was struck for a dollar.
Yay me.

The same guy supplied these next three cards for the sum of one dollar.

 I'm chasing the 06/07 OPC set, and finding this card brings me one closer. A rookie / sophomore showdown. I don't think the rookie did too well in this one. Advantage Getzlaf.

He had probably 30 or so 08/09 OPC SP hi numbers..... but only one that I needed.

 Voracek was leading the league in scoring at the All Star break, causing a lot of dealers to go scrambling into their quarter and commons boxes to pull this card out and price it at $5 -$10... I'm glad I found a guy who was lazy.

And the immortal Aaron Palushaj.

 Turns out I already had it.
Whoops.


Onto the next table, and I grabbed 6 cards for $5. All from the same set. All numbered parallels.

I think I already have this one too..... but I haven't found it yet.

This one was new to me though. Now he just needs another call up.

Boo yeah. Mr Hart trophy himself.

 By the by... did you see the video of Carey Price photobombing a kid taking a selfie during the game? He's as cool as the other side of the pillow. Forget about Billy Dee...

Why did I buy a Predator? Meh. He'll go in the trade box.

But I've wanted this card since it came out. This is just an awesome shot of Bernie.

 And it's number 69 (giggity) of 85! For .84 cents!


The final card at the final table as I was leaving....
It was new.
It was sooooo shiny.
It was Carey.
It was $3.
It was (and is) mine.

and just like that, there I was, gone. Heading back home in time to pick up my wife and take her to all the places she had planned for us.
Ten dollars lighter.
Ten cards happier.

Heading to the F.L.A.....

One of, if not the greatest to ever put on skates is on the move again. Jaromir Jagr as we know and love his 'fro....

 

even though he now actually looks more like this...

is taking his talents to South Beach.

I read a few interesting tidbits about this particular swap, so I thought I'd  copy it share with you.



1. Jagr's first NHL game came before 10 of his teammates were born. Aleksander Barkov, Nick Bjugstad, Jonathan Huberbeau, Brandon Pirri, Vincent Trocheck, Garrett Wilson, Erik Gudbranson, Dmitry Kulikov, Alex Petrovic and Aaron Ekblad.


2. Ekblad is the youngest of Jagr's new teammates. He was born on Feb. 7, the same day Jagr scored a goal for the Penguins against the Devils. Jagr scored 135 goals before Ekblad was born. Or 134, depending on exactly when Jagr's goal went in.


3. Jagr may have started in the NHL before the Panthers were founded, but he's actually played 104 fewer games than the Florida franchise because he spent three years playing in Russia in the middle of his career.


4. Despite playing in fewer games, Jagr has 128 more wins than the Panthers franchise.


5. Because Jagr's teams won more games than the Panthers, they made the playoffs more often. Jagr has played in 202 playoff games in his career, while the Panthers have only played 38. Florida scored 94 goals in those games, while Jagr has scored or assisted on 121 playoff goals.

Talk about providing some veteran leadership.

I for one hope this move gives the Panthers the last boost they need to grab the final playoff spot in the East. I would really enjoy watching Jagr in the playoffs one last time.


I suppose these guys will now need another member.





They're all from Calgary? Hmmmm.... I wonder how I'd look with a mullet? And where the hell can I get a Panther sweater?