Colton Teubert Autograph Card

My (remaining) childhood team - the Edmonton Oilers - has eliminated last year's Western Conference finalist San Jose Sharks in a tiring, tight but predictable series and will now face the tougher, bigger, faster and meaner Anaheim Ducks.

The Oilers' defense has not looked this good in at least an entire decade, and team chemistry is at its most cohesive since the 2005-06 Stanley Cup Final run. Even the Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson trade is looking great (addition by subtraction in team spirit and cleaning up the air, adding a quality defensive defenseman, and making room to sign a more physical top-six left winger in Milan Lucic are three huge victory points for Edmonton).

Such a trade would not have been necessary, however, had Colton Teubert panned out as the team expected him to when they traded for him with the Los Angeles Kings (along with first-round and second-round picks, for Dustin Penner). The Oilers took a chance on the 6'4", 210-pound former first round pick (13th overall in 2008) because he'd previously been teammates with Jordan Eberle with the WHL's Regina Pats, making the All-Star Game and having Regina mayor Pat Fiacco proclaim January 8, 2010 as "Jordan Eberle and Colten Teubert Day". Yeah, that happened.

However, the Oilers were pretty bad, and their AHL affiliate Oklahoma City Barons weren't great either, and his development stagnated; he fell into the minuses, took a lot of penalties, and ultimately was forced to sign in Germany to pursue his dream of playing professional hockey. And he's actually doing fine there:

from HockeyDB.com

He has won gold (2008 World U-18 Championships and 2009 World Juniors) and silver (2010 World Juniors) medals playing for Team Canada and, at age 27, seems to have found his groove.

Here he is as a tough Oilers prospect, wearing the classic blue (now-home) uniform on the Bronze variant of card #MM-30 from Panini's 2013-14 Titanium set and Metallic Marks sub-set:

It features a blue-sharpied on-sticker autograph.

Philippe Cornet Autograph Card

I'm a pretty big Edmonton Oilers fan (yes, even to this day) and was surprised this winter when I kept coming up on Philippe Cornet cards in almost every brand I picked up. This guy was either a huge prospect I'd slept on, or the Bob Corkum of his generation. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

He had a semi-distinguished career in Juniors with the LHJMQ's Rimouski Océanic and Rouyn-Noranda Huskies, improving every year and going from 21 points to 49 and 77 twice; he was also a point-per-game playoff performer, which probably helped when the Oilers took their 5th-round pick to make him the 133rd draftee of the class of 2008.

His first AHL season with the Oklahoma City Barons wasn't all that spectacular (7 goals and 23 points in 60 games), but his 24 goals in his sophomore year got him both a couple of call-ups to the NHL and an AHL All-Star Game nod.

That year, he showed he could find the back of the net, but also proved he could be a nifty passer against adults at the pro level. It seems every article about Barons games has a mention of his making a perfect pass through three pairs of skates directly on a teammate's stick blade. He also showed some courage and determination, always the first guy to jump in the corner or on the boards to wrestle the puck from much bigger opponents - though not always succeeding.

During his three years with the Barons, he made the playoffs twice, registering 4 goals, 12 assists and 16 points in 31 games - decent numbers, if not star-caliber, which may be why the Oilers chose not to re-sign him last season. Instead, he signed an AHL deal with the San Antonio Rampage (the Florida Panthers' AHL affiliate), who traded him mid-season to the Charlotte Checkers, home to the Carolina Hurricanes' prospects.

The NHL being an Old Boys' country club, though, generally, when a player doesn't make the roster on non-playoff teams, he's soon forgotten about, which may eventually lead to his moving to Europe for a higher level of play, pay, and lifestyle. Cornet arguably has the talent to be very good at a level just one notch below the NHL; where that may be, we'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I can cross #51 off my Oilers Numbers Project with card #MM-42 of Panini's 2013-14 Titanium set (part of the Metallic Marks sub-set, the Bronze variant), with a thin blue-sharpied sticker autograph with his jersey number included:

I'll say this about the product: boxes like this one, where you get 20 cards in total for roughly $100 (sometimes a bit more) are the main reason why I usually stick to $30 boxes like Score, O-Pee-Chee, Victory and the like; there is no way I would have paid $5 for any of the cards I pulled, though I was happy I got to further my Oilers project along, and I got a few jersey cards of players I like, but could have done without.

What I usually do is get in groups, where, say, 10 or 15 of us will get together and split 5, 10 or 15 boxes (whatever divides ok), and keep whatever interests us the most; people like getting into these groups with me because I won't call dibs on the Crosbys (there are never any anyway), though we usually make a deal where if one very valuable card is pulled, we just sell it on Ebay and split the money.

Anyhow, I'd rather get two autographs and a few hundred ''regular'' cards for $30 than five sub-par ''hits'' with already-bent corners (such as the top-right one on this card) for $100, which is a whole day's work for me before taxes.