Jeremy Roenick Jersey Card

Was Jeremy Roenick a very good hockey player? Absolutely, with 1216 points (513 goals and 703 assists) in 1363 regular-season games and 122 points (53 goals and 69 assists) in 154 playoff games. He also played for Team USA at the 1998 and 2002 Olympics, earning a silver medal in 2002. For all of those achievements, including ranking fourth all-time among American-born skaters for goals scored, he was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010.

That being said, did his ego usually get in the way of his making better, wiser decisions? All the time.

I've written before how Chris Chelios put him in his place early in his career when Roenick was under the impression that he'd reach the Stanley Cup Final regularly throughout his career, and we were privy to another such occasion of late, when he spent a night in jail after being arrested for driving with a suspended license in New York State.

It's not that he was wrong; indeed, there was just about no way of him knowing the state had been sending notices of an outstanding ticket to the wrong address, one that was 20 years removed from him living there. But he could have been more understanding towards the system, acknowledging there was no way the State could know he no longer lived in Westchester County but instead now resides in Arizona. At least in public, not using Twitter to express his anger.

And he certainly could have avoided adding: "I'm out $750. Not only my time. Plus I got arrested. Plus I sat in a jail cell with coke-heads. Plus I sat in the courtroom with real criminals. I've never been arrested before in my life!" So much for the courtroom motto (and justice system as a whole) being "innocent until proven guilty"... and such a great judge of character to demean addicts as lesser people than he - if they were coke-heads at all.

All this just two months removed from the Chicago Blackhawks honoring him as the third former player (after 1980s superstars Denis Savard and Steve Larmer) to get to dress for "One More Shift" prior to a game against the Vancouver Canucks.

Here he is sporting the Philadelphia Flyers' white (then-home) uniform they wore from 1982 until 2007:

It's card #115 from Upper Deck's 2003-04 SP Game-Used Edition collection and SP Cup Contenders sub-set, featuring a nice, big orange game-worn jersey swatch.