Alexandre Burrows Autographed Card

By now you know how I feel about Vancouver Canucks winger Alexandre Burrows - a hard-working, consistent, reliable player who can play both ways and get under opponents' skin. If I managed a team, I'd want him on it (yes, despite just having had his worst season in the NHL), and I'd even maybe tack an 'A' on his chest, perhaps on the condition that he play at least one season straight: no embellishments, and no stupid penalties in general, especially in the offensive zone.

He's particularly good on the penalty kill, so it makes no sense to have him sit in the box for over 100 minutes each year.

I think he is still first-line material, and still good for 25-30 goals, and 50-some points for the remainder of his current contract (3 more years). He did just play for Team Canada at the World Championships, sustaining an injury that wasn't as serious as previously suspected - he came back to play in Canada's final game - but had him limping a bit when I saw him last week, hanging with some of my hockey friends when the New York Rangers were in town facing the Montréal Canadiens.

Burrows was gearing up towards a summer of rehabilitation, training, and participation in hockey schools; he has his own, which takes place in August in Vaudreuil-Dorion, but he also usually pops up at others', including the one hosted by Guillaume Latendresse and Maxim Lapierre in Candiac.

Among the frequent guest coaches at his school are Lapierre, Pierre-Cédric Labrie, and Mathieu Darche, who actually went to high school with Alex's sister and I in the first half of the 1990s. I think I'll go have a look at how their little goalies are faring for a day or two myself.

Alexandre signed this 2008-09 MVP card for me (#288 in the set by Upper Deck) in blue sharpie, on top of the fac-simile autograph on the card, which is always a weird look, though it's all we had handy:

I had already had a 4/3 return in the mail from him a few years back. He's a generous person who hasn't let success to get to his head, be it at the NHL level or as a member of two separate Ball Hockey Halls of Fame.