Robert Kron Autographed Card

Robert Kron was an important member of the Czechoslovakian hockey team at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, participating in three straight World Junior Championships and winning two consecutive bronze medals at the World Championships in 1989 and 1990 before making the team for the 1991 Canada Cup.

In the NHL, he was a Vancouver Canucks fifth-round draft pick (88th overall) in 1985, and made his way across the pond to post 32 points in 76 games in his rookie season in 1990-91.

He was moved to the Hartford Whalers at the trade deadline during the 1992-93 season, and would post two 20-goal seasons with the franchise (both in 50-point seasons) and remained with the team as they became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997-98, remaining all the way until the summer of 2000, when the Columbus Blue Jackets chose him in the expansion draft. He would play in Columbus for two seasons before playing in Finland for one year.

He is now the European director of amateur scouting on the Canes.

He also fits the bill as #58 in my Canucks Numbers Project, with this card that he probably signed in his final season, a.k.a. the year I got back into following hockey:

It's card #225 from Upper Deck's flagship 1991-92 Series 1 set, signed in blue sharpie (which tells me it probably doesn't go back to my teen years) and shows him wearing the Canucks' quintessential black (away) uniform, with the skate logo that they will bring back for one game this coming season. It's a hundred times better than their current blue-and-green retro monstrosities, and stands as my favourite Canucks uniform (ahead even of the admittedly less-tacky Markus Naslund-era from the turn of the millennium).