Trevor Kidd Autograph Card

My last Trevor Kidd post, in 2009, was short and sweet - perhaps a tad too much so. Writing that a goalie with a GAA above 4.00 in Juniors was rarely chosen in the first round was one thing, but I could have played Devil's Advocate and at least mentioned that the greatest goalie of all time, Patrick Roy, had GAAs of 6.26, 4.44 and 5.55 in the LHJMQ, playing at least 44 games each time. Granted, he was a third-round pick, but he still became the only NHLer in history to win the Conn Smythe three times. Perspective, they call it.

Ok, so Kidd was no Roy, but he did finish 7th in Vezina voting in the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season, playing in an astonishing 43 of 48 Calgary Flames games and who had an even better season in 1997-98 with the Carolina Hurricanes, going 21-21-3 with a 2.17 GAA and .922 save percentage in 47 games. With the Hurricanes, who as a whole went 33-41-8, or, if you will, 12-20-5 without Kidd.

There's a lot of vitriol on the interwebs about Trevor Kidd, and a bit of fun delusion too (one person compares him positively with Martin Brodeur, and while I agree with all of their anti-Brodeur arguments in general, he still did get all those wins, despite the system he was in rigging his statistics).

But just like I credit Brodeur for his three Stanley Cups and wins (and losses) records, Kidd has two World Juniors gold medals with Team Canada, Olympic silver and a shutout at the 1992 Albertville Games, and a Memorial Cup as the starting goalie with the Spokane Chiefs in 1991. He has 140 career NHL wins, and 19 shutouts despite usually playing on pretty bad teams. No one can ever take those away from him.

And he had style, pizazz. He had long rock star hair, artistic goatees, and his equipment stood out, as can be attested by this 1998-99 Be A Player card from In The Game (#22 in the set, signed on-card in black sharpie), showing him in the Canes' white (home) uniform:

He turned into what I thought I would become, as a fellow fan of Brian's gear - and he got to keep his uniform number (37) on all four teams he played for.