Zach Bogosian Swatch Card

I honestly didn't think I'd be writing about Zach Bogosian this soon, but he has reportedly asked for a trade from the Buffalo Sabres, as a pending unrestricted free agent, because being a healthy scratch on a middling team can sometimes be worse on a player's value than asking out of an unfavourable situation.

He's not doing too bad, with three assists in 10 games with an average ice time under of 19 minutes per game - more than two minutes short of his career average, but with the team's surplus of right-handed defensemen - Rasmus Ristolainen, Brandon Montour, Colin Miller, and Henri Jokiharju play the same position, and there's room for three of them per game - it becomes a numbers game that he is in almost no position to win: Ristolainen was dangled as trade bait all summer and there were no takers, while Montour, Miller and Jokirarju are all "new toys" the team wants to play with, having all been acquired via trade in this calendar year.

Not only has Bogosian been playing for the Sabres for six years, but he's been injured often enough that the idiom "out of sight, out of mind" may apply. But trading him won't be easy if they keep scratching him, particularly considering his cap hit that is north of $5M.The only potential destination I see at the moment would be the Winnipeg Jets - the team that signed him to his current deal in the first place - and I don't see them parting with anything more than a fifth- or sixth-rounder for his services, maybe a fourth-rounder if the Sabres agree to keep a good portion of his salary on their cap.

We're a long waya away from the day when the Atlanta Thrashers made him the third-overall pick of the 2008 draft, behind Steven Stamkos and Drew Doughty, and ahead of Alex Pietrangelo (4th), Erik Karlsson (15th), Jake Gardiner (17th), John Carlson (27th), Slava Voynov (32nd), Roman Josi (38th), Travis Hamonic (53rd), Marco Scandella (55th), and T.J. Brodie (114th).

Speaking of which, here he is wearing the Thrashers' alternate uniform from 2008-11 - one of the ugliest jerseys in NHL history, with football-style jersey numbers on the front - on card #15 from Panini's 2010-11 Pinnacle set and City Lights sub-set:

It features a matching red swatch and the following tidbit of information on the back of the card:

First-time Atlanta visitors may get lost at first, making constant turns from one Peachtree street to another and another. In all, there are enarly 60 streets in Atlanta with the word "Peachtree" in their names. A map is a definite must for anyone venturing into this Peachtree orchard.

Kind of explains why that first season of The Walking Dead is so vague in its depecition of the cityscape. Personally, I may have gone with the city's artistic achievements, what with it being the city Outkast, Tyler Perry, Arrested Development (the music act, not the TV show), Ludacris, Akon, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and the rest of TLC, Goodie Mob, Jermaine Dupri, and Bubba Sparxxx called home at the time, a list to which we can add the likes of Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, Kelly Rowland, Ying Yang Twins, Migos, Gucci Mane and 2 Chainz nowadays, not to mention Martin Luther King Jr., Hank Aaron, Ted Turner, Toni Braxton, David Cross, Jane Fonda, Jeff Foxworthy, Oliver Hardy, Ed Helms, Holly Hunter, Robert Patrick, Ryan Seacrest, Keenan Thompson, Chris Tucker, and Steven Soderbergh.

Yeah, I know Spike Lee was born there as well, but he's so New York that I couldn't fathom associating him with the city.