Cody Ceci Autographed Card

It's been an interesting summer for Cody Ceci, to say the least.

For the Ottawa native whose entire career thus far had been with the Ottawa Senators, it started off with a trade to heated rivals Toronto Maple Leafs, a Canada Day mini-blockbuster that saw the Sens acquire defenceman Nikita Zaitsev, 20-goal scoring forward Connor Brown, and minor-leaguer Michael Carcon in exchange for blueliners Ceci and Ben Harpur as well as minor-league forward Aaron Luchuk and the Columbus Blue Jackets' third-round pick in the 2020 draft.

Then came the signing of his contract with the Leafs, a $4.5M, one-year deal that had the fan base all riled up, and he is now being sued by a woman who claims to have suffered burns at the hands of Ceci's wife. But Canada doesn't operate like the U.S. in those matters, so this will likely end in the defenseman's favour.

While Ceci's play has been decried of late - especially last year, when he was essentially asked to fill Erik Karlsson's shoes as the Sens' "best" right-handed defender - he still compares to guys who have the same first-round draft pick pedigree, like Olli Maatta:

via The Hockey Writers

He also did pretty well the year the Sens made it to the Conference Finals:

The Leafs just have to make sure they put him in a position to succeed, even if that means putting him on the second pair with Jake Muzzin, despite his high cap hit.

Here he is on the "Retro" variant of card #180 from the 2015-16 O-Pee-Chee set by Upper Deck:

It shows him wearing the Senators' beautiful throwback black uniform. This should be their permanent home jersey, in my opinion. He signed the card in blue sharpie, with his number (5) tagged at the end, possibly during the 2016-17 season.