Sunday, August 31, 2014

Jeff Hackett Jersey Card

Jeff Hackett wasn't the most affable man, either with fans or the press, but one thing he was very good at was stopping pucks. In his 500-game NHL career, he stopped over 12,500 of them - nearly 4,000 with the Montréal Canadiens alone.

In parts of 5 seasons with the Habs, there were two where he was healthy enough to play the majority of the games; he won the Molson Cup both times as the team's MVP, and even finished in the top-10 in terms of Vezina voting despite the team being dreadful. He finished twice in the league's top-3 for save percentage, another time in the top-5, and once more in the top-10.

Had he played with better teams than the New York Islanders, the expansion San Jose Sharks, the mid-to-late-1990s Chicago Blackhawks, the turn-of-the-millennium Habs and early-2000s goalie cemeteries Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers, he may have boosted his wins record by at least 50%, from 166 to close to 250. As it stands, though, he is still 94th on the all-time wins list; to put it in perspective, at least 75 goalies play in an NHL game each year, and the league has been in operation for 97 years.

I really like this card from In The Game's 2012-13 Forever Rivals set (card #BTP-13 of the Between The Pipes sub-set), as it shows a close-up of his classic Habs mask (two kids with Canadiens toques playing in the snow) and a big white game-used jersey swatch:

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