Drake Batherson Autographed Card

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Just hours ago, Ottawa Senators right winger Drake Batherson tied a team record with a six-game goal streak, joining the likes of Jason Spezza, Dany Heatley, Daniel Alfredsson and Bob Kudelski as one of the franchise's premier snipers.

The 22-year-old is solidifying a solid start to his professional career, having played in the 2019 and 2020 AHL All-Star Games and now posting solid numbers (17 points in 24 games on a team at the bottom of its division) in the NHL. He had previously been a point-per-game player in the LHJMQ and scored a team-leading 7 goals in 7 games in helping Team Canada to a gold medal at the 2018 World Juniors on a stacked roster that included Carter Hart, Cale Makar, Sam Steel, Jordan Kyrou, Brett Howden, Maxime Comtois and Dillon Dubé.

He's certainly silenced the voices that were calling for him to get relegated to the taxi squad after a 16-game goalless drought. I'm not certain he'll remain on the top unit when the team becomes a Stanley Cup contender, but he is definitely making a case to remain in the top-six up front for the foreseeable future.

Here is a close-up of his face on card #P-54 from Upper Deck's 2018-19 Series 2 collection and UD Rookie Portraits sub-set:

He signed it in blue sharpie and returned it by mail last year, with his jersey number (79) tagged at the end, matching that of his helmet on the card; he has switched to #19 since 2019, though, following in Spezza's footsteps with the likes of Derick Brassard and Alexei Yashin. I certainly don't mind having him represent #79 in my Sens Numbers Project!

2019-20 Upper Deck Series 1 "Mega" Canadian Blaster Box Break

I didn't receive any of Upper Deck's flagship 2019-20 Series 1 cards for Christmas this year and felt they were overpriced compared to other products (namely Parkhurst and O-Pee-Chee, and Topps's Stickers set), so I was ready to wait until a good deal presented itself, and I felt that it did in the form of this "Mega" Blaster Box because of the Canadian Exclusive extra, which we'll get to later:

Here is what the base cards look like:

The Justin Schultz card on the left shows the diversity of jerseys one can find in these, and the Brent Seabrook card on the right shows that the back displays the player's complete career statistics as well as a short blurb, regardless whether said player is a rookie or a veteran - none of that "past five years" crap. It's a very glossy set as well, so great for the eyes, a headache to get signed; collector advice: even erasing multiple layers of gloss may leave signatures a bit smudgy.

As usual, the set features amazing photography:

I was able to land a couple of insert cards, including a couple of Young Guns, Danil Yurtaykin and Josh Brown:

I also fell upon a Canvas card of Josh Bailey:

There was also a Shooting Stars card of Brendan Gallagher:

I was under the impresion that these concerned mostly young guys, but veteran Gallagher is a bona fide star and likes to shoot the puck, so that works.

One insert I can definitely do without is UD Portraits, which are at best creepy and/or tacky, and for goalies wearing their masks, utterly useless, as can be attested from this Henrik Lundqvist card:

Which brings me to the bonus two-card pack of Team Triples, which for some reason shows only player (the Vancouver Canucks' Quinn Hughes):

I pulled two historically tough teams, the "Broad Street Bullies" Philadelphia Flyers (featuring Claude Giroux, Carter Hart and Nolan Patrick) and the "Big Bad" Boston Bruins (with Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak and Tuukka Rask):

I'd have been more interested if they'd been signed or jersey cards, but as it stands, they're trade bait or Ebay-ready, hoping they find someone who'll show them more love than I can give them.

All told, I got 74 cards: 9 packs of 8 cards for the regular Series 1 set, and the two Team Triples, for $44 ($37 plus sales taxes) - two hours of work at a good-paying job and just under four hours of work at minimum wage (before income taxes, so roughly three hours at a good-paying job and five at minimum wage). Not as nuts as a concert or hockey game ticket, but a significant enough investment that it's likely not an impulse buy.

The cards look and feel great, and they're perfect if you're looking to build a set, and UD even made unannounced variants of two dozen cards where the players are depicted in another jersey and oftentimes in a differnet orientation (vertical vs horizontal), giving it more collectability.

However, between the retail packs, fat packs, retail boxes, hobby boxes, regular blaster boxes and special-edition blaster boxes, it really feels like the 2019-20 iteration is over-produced in the same way that Pro Set cards used to be; it sells at a higher price than it used to but isn't rarer. I don't feel that any of the cards I pulled are worth the 50 cents I paid for them, and wouldn't be surprised if once the mass-production numbers come out, this set's value falls off a cliff.

Despite all of this, I'm not exactly underwhelmed by it either; I'm just not super-excited.

It's slightly above "meh": I'm at 7/10.

Nick Paul: Two Autographed Cards

First things first: Nick Paul was a power forward in Juniors who didn't quite live up to that reputation in the AHL afterwards, but with 9 points in 25 games with the Ottawa Senators so far in 2019-20, it feels like the 24-year-old, 6'3", 220-pound winger is getting a feel as how to translate that in the Big Show. However, he'd left Wednesday's game against the Edmonton Oilers in the first period with a neck contusion, so he wasn't playing at 100% against the Philadelphia Flyers this afternoon.

Second: Flyers gonna Flyer. It looks like a bench that has Alain Vigneault to lead it and Michel Therrien, Mike Yeo and Ian Laperriere wants to bring grit back after the Ron Hextall/Dave Hakstol talent-driven years, as the Flyers players took exception to many a hard, legal, quality hit by the Sens to retaliate, cheap-shot and goat Ottawa players into fighting.

Joel Farabee initiated a fight with Jean-Gabriel Pageau of all people for a clean hit Pageau had laid out on his prior - what ever happened to taking note of a guy's number and trying to get him back later? Does Farabee not trust himself enough to put himself in a position to either hit Pageau back or strip him off the puck in a manner that'll make it on a highlights reel? Pageau defended himself ok and threw a decent couple of shots, but someone should clock that rookie to teach him some respect.

Which brings me to Jakub Voracek. I like him a lot and will continue to defend his play and effort (when defensible) even as the 60-point seasons become more common than the 80-point ones, but seriously, it's not his role to pick a fight with Paul after the Sens laid big hits out on Travis Konecky (a masterclass center-ice hit by Mark Borowiecki, the guy who stopped a robbery in Vancouver earlier this week) and Farabee:

It was a case where I had to root for Paul, who dished out a couple of nice uppercuts, not just because the Sens were playing clean and didn't deserve to get called out on their hits, but also because Paul was damn close to having had a concussion just three nights ago and this dickhead chose him as the scapegoat to try to change the momentum of the game.

It did, as the Flyers ended up intimidating their way to a 4-3 win, and now head coach D.J. Smith has to convince his team that the pain they endured in a losing cause wasn't worth it, but perhaps just a tiny bit more pain - 5% more - would have resulted in a win, and that's pain that's worth the effort.

So Nick Paul and Jean-Gabriel Pageau deserve stars in their notebooks today, as does Borowiecki - and the Flyers earned a note in the teacher's binder that they are not mature enough to be patient, not smart enough to be strategic and win clean, not brave enough to fight fire with fire, and not talented enough to keep up with a team that was destined to be a bottom-two this season. They are once again bullies, but probably not tough enough to handle big boys like the Boston Bruins or St. Louis Blues.

Here is Paul wearing the Sens' best-looking jersey of all time, the "Black O", on card #299 from Upper Deck's 2016-17 MVP set:

And here's a close-up of his face, wearing Ottawa's white (away) uniform, on card #P-107 from Upper Deck's 2016-17 Series 2 collections and UD Portraits sub-set:

He signed both "Rookie" cards in blue sharpie last year, when the Sens lost 5-2 against the Montréal Canadiens at the Bell Centre.

He suited up for Team Canada at the 2015 World Juniors, and one of his 3 goals (in 7 games) was scored in the final against Team Russia, helping the Canadians win gold on home soil in a 5-4 game.

Box Break: 2018-19 Upper Deck Series 1 Hobby Box

For the second time in as many days, I was granted a Christmas wish - to receive 2018-19 hockey cards for Christmas; this time around, my Mom bought me a full box of 24 eight-card packs of Upper Deck 2018-19 Series 1 cards.

The hits were pretty massive this time around as well, including six regular-issue Young Guns rookie cards, including hyped first-overall pick Rasmus Dahlin (as well as Marcus Pettersson, Samuel Montembault, Trevor Murphy, Morgan Klimchuk, and Luke Johnson):

I also pulled four Portraits cards, featuring Ben Bishop, Jake Guentzel, Semyon Varlamov and rookie Lias Andersson:

There were also five Canvas cards, including Young Gun Dominik Kahun, Claude Giroux, Artem Anisimov, Mikael Granlund and the checklist card featuring Taylor Hall and Nathan MacKinnon (not pictured):

One pretty sub-set that is contantly a staple of Upper Deck's flagship set is Shooting Stars, and I managed to land William Karlsson:

But the card that will soon make its way to my binders is this Ben Bishop jersey card:

My main gripe with this one is the card selection mixed with the odds; the main set consists of just 200 cards. This box had 190 pieces of cardboard (173 regular-issue cards, as the jersey card took the space of three cards in a pack) and my tin from yesterday had 96 (89 regular-issue cards if you take away the inserts).

Out of those 89, 75 were doubled in this box - or 85%. I still have 17 cards left to collect to complete the main set (notwithstanding the 50 Young Guns and other assorted sub-sets). This at a cost of over $100. Somehow, it doesn't feel right.

Still, it's a quality set.

I'll stick with the 8/10 grade I tacked onto it yesterday, it's just that it's accompanied by a slight feeling of disappointment.

Box Break: 2018-19 Upper Deck Series 1 Tin

Anywhere I could, this Christmas, I asked for 2018-19 hockey cards or help paying for my upcoming driving classes; the first Christmas Miracle came in at a gift exchange party where the person who had picked me went with the list I provided and got me a tin box of Upper Deck's flagship 2018-19 Series 1 cards, which consists of 12 eight-card packs for a total of 96 cards. These usually go for roughly $40-45.

Here is what this year's set looks like:

The design borrows heavily on past Artifacts sets, but with the traditional Series 1 super gloss. The photography is mostly excellent, and each team has as many different uniforms as possible, but I could do without the oddball pre/post-game shenanigans as well as the pretend-military-style warmup garbs:

 One sub-set that was new to me was Rookie Commence, of which I pulled Dylan Sikura:

Although the one everybody is curious about is the Young Guns, of which I pulled my favourite rookie, Elias Pettersson (as well as Nick Seeler and Mikhail Vorobyev):

I also pulled a rookie out of the two UD Portraits cards I nabbed:

And there was a Canvas card of Steven Stamkos:

My experience from years past makes me think I should unload the Pettersson card even though I really like him - he's by far my favourite rookie this year - because I fear losing it in yet another move or worse, damaging it. I've seen it go for $80-125 online and my guess is that someone paying that much for it would make sure it remains in pristine condition. Then again, I'd love to get it signed and use it as the centerpiece of a player collection of his...

All told, Upper Deck's flagship series once again hits the mark. This box is a solid 8/10.