Sunday, October 13, 2019

Mikael Granlund Jersey Card

(team and product links go to sponsored Amazon products, player links go to related pages on my blog, news links go to source pages)

Chosen by the Minnesota Wild with the ninth-overall pick at the 2010 draft, Mikael Granlund currently stands eighth in points in his draft class behind Tyler Seguin (2nd), Taylor Hall (1st), Jeff Skinner (7th), Vladimir Tarasenko (16th), Ryan Johansen (4th), Evgeny Kuznetsov (26th) and Mark Stone (178th), meaning he was one of the few that fell at exactly the right spot.

It took him a few years to learn how to utilize his talents in the NHL at top-line level, spending four seasons as the understudy to Mikko Koivu and then Eric Staal, but in his age 24 (2016-17) and 25 (2017-18) seasons, he cracked the 20-goal and 60-point marks both times, with a high of 26 goals and 69 points in 2016-17.

He was on his way to a similar type of production last year when the Wild traded him to the Nashville Predators for Kevin Fiala in what appears as both an eventual salary dump and a bet that Fiala may develop into the same type of player or better, but so far the results have been middling for both teams.

Here he is wearing the Wild's white (away) uniform, on card #GJ-MG from Upper Deck's 2018-19 Series 1 set and UD Game Jersey sub-set:
It features a matching game-worn jersey swatch with two rows of stitching that appear clearly on the card but not on the scan. I got it on Ebay for a couple of bucks; Beckett values it at around $5.

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