Nikolai Antropov: 6 Autographed Cards

What a great return!

For most Toronto Maple Leafs fans, Nikolai Antropov was a decent player who never quite met the expectations they had for him. The giant 6'6'', 245-pound center never became the point-per-game first-liner they thought they were getting when the team chose him 10th overall in the 1998 draft ahead of All Stars like Alex Tanguay, Scott Gomez, Simon Gagné, Mike Ribeiro, Brad Richards, Andrei Markov, Shawn Horcoff, and other notable players like Mike Fisher and Brian Gionta. But the team may have been tempted to pick Antropov well ahead of his projected second round status because he'd just scored 11 goals and 26 points in a single game against Iceland's men's team in a ''friendly'' international game.

As a Montréal Canadiens fan, however, I can assure you he loved playing my home team, against whom he was always dominant.

The card on the left shows him wearing the Leafs blue (away) uniform and is from In The Game's flagship 2003-04 In the Game set (card #89), back when they had a license to produce NHL cards. The card on the right, where he is seen wearing the white (home) uniform, is from Pacific's 2000-01 McDonald's Prism set (card #31), another defunct brand. McDonald's cards are now produced by Upper Deck. Notice the card on the left has him wearing #11 and the one on the right sees him with #11, but he signed both with #80...

(continued in the next post)