Monday, September 23, 2019

Teuvo Teravainen Jersey Card

(As per years past, this is a twin-post with my "regular" blog, where I predicted the Carolina Hurricanes would finish seventh in the Metropolitan Division in 2019-20).

At 25 years of age, Teuvo Teravainen is about to enter his prime years, where he should be a point-per-game player for five or six of the next seven seasons, at a cap hit of $5.4M per season. He nearly lost his most important teammate to achieve that goal, but the Canes matched the Montréal Canadiens' offer sheet to Sebastian Aho, so the pair will be able to bring some offense to Raleigh for the next half-decade.

Most observers knew he'd be a top-six forward in his prime - even the Chicago Blackhawks, who sent him to Carolina as a sweetener for taking on Bryan Bickell's bloated salary in a trade for two late draft picks; unbeknownst to Hawks brass, Bickell had a case of undiagnosed multiple sclerosis that would put his career in jeopardy soon afterwards, meaning they could have put him on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) and subtracted his cap hit from their cap calculations... and not only kept Teravainen, but made the Hurricanes' rebuild last at least two more years.

He's also shown some decent leadership skills at the international level, posting 11 points in 7 games as an underage player at the 2013 World Juniors, then leading Team Finland to gold as the squad's captain the following year... in Sweden, Finland's most natural rival and frenemy, geopolitically.

Here he is sporting the Hurricanes' bight red (current home) uniform on the "gold" jersey insert version card #21 from Upper Deck's 2018-19 SP Game-Used Edition set:
It features a matching game-worn jersey swatch that is actually much brighter ("Kool Aid red" is how I would best describe it).

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