Ales Hemsky Autograph Card

The Dallas Stars seem to be in a selling mood, with the prospect of missing the playoffs one year after leading the Western Conference now becoming a reality more and more every day.

The off-kilter season started with a slew of injuries to their star players suffered at the World Cup, continued with the poor goaltending of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi, and just never let up.

One of the forwards lost at the World Cup was Ales Hemsky, who appeared in a single game before it was deemed he would need season-ending surgery to repair his hip. While he wasn't exactly lighting it up in Dallas, he did have back-to-back 30-plus-point seasons (32 and 39, respectively) with the Stars, decent middle-six numbers in this day and age, although way below his career highs (77, 71 and 66 with the Edmonton Oilers after the 2004-05 season-long lockout), and below what he usually puts up with the Czech Team in international competitions; he did lead his country in points at the 2014 Olympics, in addition to his securing a 2006 Olympic bronze medal and 2005 gold and 2012 bronze medals from the World Championships.

Here he is on card #SFS-AH from Upper Deck's 2005-06 Trilogy set and Scripts One sub-set, showing him in the Oilers' late-1990s white (home) uniform with the team's 25th Anniversary patch:

It features a blue-sharpied on-sticker autograph that makes him the perfect entry for #83 in my Oilers Numbers Project.