Friday, January 30, 2015

Two Jason Spezza Dual Jersey Cards

Regular readers know how I feel about Jason Spezza. He's still among the five best passers in the league (currently in the top-20 for assists while mostly playing with the Dallas Stars' under-performing second line wingers) and has 35 points in 48 games; I predicted he would be able to hit 70-75 points as the second-highest-scoring second-liner in the NHL (behind Sidney Crosby), and he is just one hot streak away from hitting that pace, despite the Stars not currently being in a playoff position.

Which means his year is not totally a write-off, nor a full-blown success. I would be tempted to say ''Spezza-like'', considering what fans always expected of him, both statistically and in a leadership role when he took over as captain for Daniel Alfredsson (actually, many ''fans'' were almost rooting against him from the start, saying he lacked leadership capabilities based on how he was in his early 20s as opposed to at that point in his career), but that would be unfair to a player who, at the beginning of the season, was a point-per-game player both in the regular season (587 in 586 games) and the playoffs (52 in 56). He also has 18 points in his last 16 games playing for Team Canada at the World Championships; his collection of IIHF medals is also complete, with one gold (2012 Spengler Cup), three silver (2002 World Juniors, and 2008 and 2009 Worlds), and two bronze (2000 and 2001 World Juniors).

He's 31, and has given the Ottawa Senators 10 terrific seasons (eight of them great), and had 5 points in 5 games the one year where he was mostly injured. He has 4 or 5 more very good hockey years left in him, maybe a chance at another World Championship gold medal or two if the Stars fail to make the playoffs. I was very happy that the Sens were classy enough to put this video together for last night's game, his return to Ottawa:
And it gives me the opportunity to share these really nice cards of him, each a dual-swatch card, each with one or two gold patches from the Sens' old uniforms, and both showing him wearing the Sens' white (away) uniform with the captain's 'C':
They're from Upper Deck's beautiful 2013-14 SPx collection (card #WM-JS of the Winning Materials sub-set). Usually, when I get doubles of a card, I try to sell one, but for swatch cards, if they have different colour swatches, I keep them.

No comments:

Post a Comment