2019-20 Parkhurst Hockey: Three Blaster Boxes Break

It was Boxing Day at Walmart and I was in the area, so I figured I'd stop to see which, if any, hockey card boxes were on sale; it turns out the 2019-20 Parkhurst blaster boxes from Upper Deck were nearly half off - at $19.99 instead of $34.95 - so I went ahead and picked up... three boxes.

Instead of following in last year's footsteps and making this a semi-"prime" set, UD decided to scale the Parkhurst brand - if not its price tag, which went up a couple of dollars per box - back into less glossy and more low-range ballparks, with a feel to the hand that is reminiscent of Panini's take on Score cards; the base cards do keep the general look and greeniness of the Parkhust modern era, however:

As far as statistics go, only the last season and the player's career statistics are featured on the backs of cards, but at least every player gets a short blurb. What's really cool for autograph seekers like myself is the fact that Parkhurst is the first brand to feature players who switched teams in the summertime in their new uniforms:

Out of 36 packs and 360 total cards, I pulled a fair amount of insert cards, including eight All-Stars (pictured below are Erik Karlsson, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane, missing are two each of Auston Matthews and Nikita Kucherov):

You'll notice the players are wearing their All-Star Game jerseys, but the stats on the back are of the regular season; perhaps ASG stats would have been a nice touch here.

I also landed 36 "regular" rookie cards, including the four pictured below - Nick Suzuki, Noah Dobson, Kevin Bloyle and Jack Hughes - plus Blake Lizotte, Will Borgen, Teddy Blueger, Karson Kuhlman, Carsen Twarynski, Nico Sturm, Nikita Gusev, Tobias Bjornfot, Jacob Middleton, Zach Senyshyn, Barrett Hayton, Dominik Kubalik, Rudolfs Balcers, Josh Teves, Mario Ferraro, Joel L'Espérance (twice), Adam Johnson (twice), Hughes (again), Kole Sherwood (twice), Taro Hirose, Dante Fabbro (twice), Erik Brannstrom, Filip Zadina (twice), Carl Grundstrum, Victor Olofsson, Ville Heinola and Max Veronneau:

As is customary in this day and age, there were also "Silver" versions of the base cards (Nazem Kadri, Ryan Pulock, Dylan Strome, Brock Boeser, Aaron Ekblad, Jason Zucker and Andrei Svechnikov):

There were also Silver inserts of Crosby, Kuhlman and Vitaly Abramov:

And since you can't have Silver without Gold, I landed three of those as well, rookies Ryan Kuffner and Max Jones, as well as the base card of Nicklas Backstrom:

As per years past, a lot of rookies also found their way into the Prominent Prospects sub-set:

You can see via the Suzuki card that the picture used on these cards is the same as that of the "regular" rookie card, but used differently; other pulls in that sub-set: Rasmus Sandin, Adam Fox, Ilya Mikheyev, Zadina, Dobson, Trent Frederic, and Alexandre Texier. These cards have a nice, rigid feel and are all-foil.

A nice semi-foil sub-set is Hail Storm, as can be attested by the cards featuring Vladimir Tarasenko, Brent Burns, Elias Petterson and Johnny Gaudreau:

A returning sub-set is View From The Ice, rendering stunning photographs of Drew Doughty, Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid via foil treatment:

And, last but not least in the foil inserts, the Parkies, featuring McDavid, Ryan Poehling, John Tavares, Matt Murray, Alexander Radulov, Alex Ovechkin, Zadina and Jonathan Marchessault:

I wasn't all that impressed with the first few packs and halfway through my first box, I was seriously doubting the relevance of my purchase - and the collation is pretty weak, as I have a bunch of doubles - but the fact that the cards aren't overly glossy and will be easy-ish to get signed felt more and more like a plus as the break went on, and the plethora of inserts just seemed to add to that as I kept digging.

This has turned into a solid 8/10.