Another J.S. Giguère Jersey Card

So Jean-Sébastien Giguère made his retirement official yesterday at a press conference held at a team function of the LHJMQ's Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, the Junior team he's a part-owner of. I'd featured him last week, going at length about his career, and how our minor-league paths were similar, with each of us alternating teams and cities until it was time to join forces, which I declined to do.

Though he'll mostly be remembered as a member of the Mighty Ducks Of Anaheim / Anaheim Ducks franchise (with two Stanley Cup Finals, a Cup and a Conn Smythe to show for it), he had a more-then-decent end with the Colorado Avalanche, going 31-21-8 with 4 shutouts, a 2.51 GAA and .914 save percentage in 72 games - and one of those three seasons was for a team that finished in last place. Not too shabby.

I'm also a big fan of his career playoff statistics: in addition to his hardware, he went 33-17, had a 2.08 goals-against average and .925 save percentage in 52 games. That puts him up there with some of the greatest of all time, and though I consider him a notch below that, those are still pretty solid stats that reflect how good he was when it truly mattered.

Speaking of ''greatest of all time'', the reason I'm posting about Giggy so soon is this, when Teemu Selanne took his final lap after his last regular-season NHL game, he took Giguère along with him - and no one in the arena felt it was undeserved:
That's class and friendship, but also a testament to just how good Giguère was, which fans from the East Coast in the pre-Center Ice days might not have realized.

And because Giguère retires as a member of the Avs, I chose to feature him once more in the team's white (away) uniform, with two matching jersey swatches, from Upper Deck's 2013-14 Artifacts set (card #113 in the collection, numbered 102/125):

Artifacts is almost always one of the two nicest sets in any given year; its design is subdued yet efficient, full of information yet uncluttered, airy yet complete; and the pictures are always great.