Brad Brown Autograph Card

Brad Brown was one of many bizarre first-round pick of the Montréal Canadiens. A defensive defenseman, the 6'3'', 220-lbs North Bay Centennials rearguard was chosen 18th overall in 1994, ahead of such other players as Vezina and Hart winner José Theodore, Stanley Cup winners Mathieu Dandenault and Patrik Elias,  All Stars Sheldon Souray, Chris Drury, Milan Hejduk, Marty Turco, Daniel Alfredsson, Tim Thomas, Evgeni Nabokov, Tomas Vokoun, Steve Sullivan, Dick Tarnstrom, and Kim Johnsson, role players Shane Hnidy, Sergei Berezin, Tomas Holmstrom and Mike Peluso, Olympian Richard Zednik, as well as a former teammate of mine, enforcer Sylvain Blouin.

Brown is seen here wearing the Centennials' Boston Bruins-like white (home) jersey, except the team's logo has been airbrushed out and replaced by a generic rendering of the city instead, because the card brand's manufacturer had a license to display the players but not the teams, just like The Score Board did with this Joe Thornton card. The logo actually looked like this:

The team was sold in 2002 and moved to Michigan to become the Saginaw Spirit, Stephen Colbert's favourite OHL team (and the reason why the team's secondary mascot is named Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle).

This card (#6) is from Signature Rookies' 1995-96 Draft 96 set; like the Score Board set alluded previously, it is a set of numbered signed cards (this one is #1441 of 4500) the brand included in boxes of repackaged common cards from worthless sets (such as the second-year Pro Set, Pro Set Platinum and Parkhurt cards) to entice people to pay around $1 per pack of 7 cards not worth a penny each.

The cool part of it is you get to learn about ''prospects'' who will likely never set foot on an NHL rink, but once in a while, you get a Thornton, or a Brown, who did manage to play 330 NHL games, most of them with the Chicago Blackhawks and Minnesota Wild, but also a few with the Habs, Buffalo Sabres and New York Rangers. He retired after the 2008-09 season, which he finished with the AHL's Quad City Flames.