Alex Tanguay Jersey Card

Well, general manager Joe Sakic made some moves for the Colorado Avalanche at the trade deadline. What he really needed to do was shore up his defense, and maybe he did that by acquiring Éric Gélinas from the New Jersey Devils for a third-round pick; then again, maybe not.

Getting Shawn Matthias and Mikkel Boedker up front does nothing to change the perception that the Avs will need to win games 5-4 while relying on goalie Semyon Varlamov way too much.

And Boedker did cost two unsigned prospects (Kyle Wood and Connor Bleackley) as well as Alex Tanguay, a former teammate of Sakic's and head coach Patrick Roy on the 2001 Stanley Cup-winning team.

And though it can be argued that Tanguay was on a down slope with just 4 goals, 18 assists and 22 points in 52 games with the Avs this year, he had scored 22 just last season, finishing third on the team with 55 points. Also, most of the non-points metrics favour him over Boedker big-time, and even Bodker's regular stats line is inflated by the fact that he was playing nearly 19 minutes per game on the team's first line and still could only post 39 points in 62 games (third on the team, 9 points behind defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and just a single point ahead of Shane Doan who has appeared in 8 fewer games), with a team-worst -28 to go with it.

And with Sakic having repeatedly said in the past that he's open to Tanguay retiring as an Avs player, perhaps it opens the door to re-signing him next summer as a free agent, maybe closer to the league's minimum wage than the $3.5M he made this year.

Though he has played with the Montréal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning, I have trouble picturing him not suiting up for either the Avs or the Calgary Flames.

Speaking of which, here's a card that depicts him with both, showing him wearing the Avalanche's white (then-home) 1990s uniform (with a beautiful blue game-worn jersey swatch inserted therein) but listing him as a member of the Flames, on card #J-AT from Upper Deck's 2006-07 Black Diamond collection and Black Diamond Jersey sub-set:

Tanguay had 400 points in his first 450 games in Colorado, and all told currently stands at 488 in 589 games with the team; he also has 284 points in 342 games in Calgary, 41 in 50 games in Montréal, and 37 in 80 games in Tampa, for a grand total of 850 points in 1070 NHL games so far, plus another 59 in 98 playoff games, including 21 in 23 games in that Cup run.

He also scored just three days ago in Colorado's Stadium Series game against the long-time rival Detroit Red Wings. It was his final goal as an Av, wearing their finest uniform this year. Fitting, really.