Rod Brind'Amour: Two Autographed Cards

I must admit, I initially thought there'd be more Broad Street Bullies and Big Bad Bruins featured when I first came up with my "scary" Halloween theme for October. Heck, the Philadelphia Flyers even have the colour scheme in their regular palette...

So I'll make up for it by featuring Rod Brind'Amour, a true leader whose statistics at times resembled those of a power forward even though he played center, who twice passed the 100-penalty minute mark and had nine seasons near or over the point-per-game mark in his 20-year career.

His career-high for goals was 37 (1992-93), while his tops for assists (62) and points (97) were hit the following year, both times with the Flyers, after two seasons with the St. Louis Blues.

He mainly served as alternate captain in Philly, but he did fill in as actual captain when Eric Lindros would be injured. He was eventually traded to the Carolina Hurricanes (for Keith Primeau, essentially a future captains trade), whom he led to two Stanley Cup Finals, including a Cup victory in 2005-06 against the Edmonton Oilers.

In his other two Finals, with Philadelphia in 1996-97 and with Carolina in 2001-02, his teams fell to the Detroit Red Wings in short series.

So here's to his days of wearing the "A" in orange and black, first featuring their away uniform, on card #86 from Upper Deck's 1994-95 SP set, one I never actively collected but traded for when it came to specific players (this one may have been an add-on):

And here he is wearing their white (home) uniform, on card #78 from Fleer/Skybox's 1996-97 Fleer set:

He signed both at the same time but with different blue sharpies, as it was dying out on the first card (the Fleer). He added his jersey number (17) with the newer pen.

The two-time Selke Trophy winner (2005-06 and 2006-07) has suited up for Team Canada a number of times, winning gold at the 1994 World Championships, but was also on the second-place 1996 World Cup team as well as the disappointing 1998 Olympics showing - that time when Lindros was made captain ahead of Wayne Gretzky, that head coach Marc Crawford selected Ray Bourque for the shootout ahead of Gretzky or Steve Yzerman, on a roster that included Rob Zamuner but neither Scott Niedermayer nor Mark Messier.