Ron Sutter: 2 Autographed Cards

Always a pleasure to get mail from hockey royalty.

I sent these two cards along with a fan letter to Ron Sutter, care of the Calgary Flames where he works as a scout, on November 29th, 2010 and got them both back, signed in black sharpie, on March 28th, 2011 - 4 months later. Considering the many trips scouts make in a year, this is a tremendous return, kind of like getting the cards back in the same week.

Of all the Sutter brothers, Ron was the last to retire. He played with his twin brother Rich on three different teams: the Memorial Cup-winning Lethbridge Broncos, and the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers and St. Louis Blues, for a total of 8 seasons. He also played with the San Jose Sharks while his brother Darryl was the team's head coach.

Because he played in the East more, in what was then called the Prince-Of-Wales conference, with the Flyers, mostly, but also the New York Islanders, Boston Bruins and my-then favourite team Québec Nordiques, he is by far the Sutter brother I've seen play the most.

And now for the cards:

This is card #476 of Pro Set's 1991-92 Series 2 set, basically an update because he was traded from the Flyers to the Blues in September of that season. It's an impressive feat to get an 'A' on your chest upon your arrival on a new team, but in all fairness, Ron had just spent the past two seasons as the Flyers' captain, becoming no less than the fourth Sutter to wear the 'C' on his chest.

But my favourite of the two cards, of course, is this one:

That's card #482 of Leaf's 1993-94 Donruss Series 2 set, released mid-season to update players who had been traded (in Sutter's case, from the Blues to the Nordiques in January 1994) and as an excuse to feature rookies before the next season's releases. It was rare, from, say, 1983 to 1995, to have Nordiques players portrayed in their home (white) jerseys on trading cards, as most of the NHL's photographers preferred the relatively calm weather of New England - where roughly a third of the league's teams called home - to Canada's frigid winter conditions - not to mention having to travel to a city where most people only spoke French, as opposed to Montréal or Ottawa, where bilingualism was more common.