Joe Sakic Jersey Card

It's been and will be an extremely busy summer for Colorado Avalanche former captain and current general manager Joe Sakic!

The biggest thing on his plate is probably re-signing RFA (restricted free agent) Tyson Barrie, one of the best young offensive defensemen in the league, who might be looking to a contract similar to that of teammate Erik Johnson, who now makes $6M per season.

In the meantime, Sakic - whose most pressing need is to improve his blue line - traded Nick Holden to the New York Rangers a week ago and signed free agents Joe Colborne - an improvement over Shawn Matthias, whom they themselves lost to free agency - as well as Patrick Wiercioch - whom the Ottawa Senators declined to make an offer to - and Fedor Tyutin, whom the Columbus Blue Jackets had just bought out.

Oh, and he traded goalie Reto Berra to the Florida Panthers in yet another puzzling move by their new GM Tom Rowe, giving way for Calvin Pickard to challenge Semyon Varlamov for ice time.

The Avs has definitely improved, but perhaps not enough to push the Minnesota Wild out of a playoff spot, and surely not enough considering both the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers also got better.

I'm also looking at one of Matt Duchene or Gabriel Landeskog to get traded this summer... probably Duchene.

So, chances are I'll be revisiting at least some of these names over the course of the summer.

In the meantime, here is card #JT-31 from Upper Deck's 2003-04 Bee Hive set (and Game-Used Jersey sub-set), showing the Avs' all-time leading scorer in their classic white (home) uniform with a burgundy swatch inserted into its design:

Here's a quick recap of Sakic's career, all with the same Avs/Québec Nordiques organization:

• 1641 points (625 goals and 1016 assists) in 1378 regular season games.
• 188 points (84 goals and 104 assists) in 172 playoff games.
• 41 points (22 goals and 19 assists) in 48 international games for Team Canada.
• Two Stanley Cups.
• 13 All-Star Games, with a record 16 ASG assists.
• An NHL record 8 playoff overtime goals.
• 3 First Team All-Star nods.
• A Conn Smythe, a Hart, a Lady Byng, a Lester B. Pearson, and an NHL Foundation Award.
• An Olympic All-Star Team nod.
• Gold medals at the Olympics (2002), World Championships (1994), World Cup (2004), and World Juniors (1988).

That, my friends, is an accomplished career!