Philipp Grubauer Autographed Card

Philipp Grubauer has come a long way since almost wrestling the Washington Capitals' starting job away from Braden Holtby after the Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft; Gru was traded to the Colorado Avalanche with one year of Brooks Orpik's monstrous contract to be bought out, for a second-round draft pick. You'd think not having Orpik attached would have netted the Caps something in the same vicinity as Semyon Varlamov once did - a first and a second.

Don't cry for the Capitals, however, because even though Holtby's deal is up now and no one should re-sign him at anything above $3M per - least of whom Washington - the team still has another blue chip young goalie ready to take over, 22-year-old Ilya Samsonov.

But back to Grubauer, who unfortunately didn't finish the Stadium Series game against the Los Angeles Kings tonight, suffering a lower-body injury when colliding with defenseman Ian Cole after stopping Kings forward Austin Wagner on a breakaway. He was having another terrific season for the Avs:

from HockeyDB

I included his career stats to show that when playing with a team that is good defensively, he can be even better, but the Avs are not that at all. For instance, two members of their top line are in the minuses: Mikko Rantanen (40 points in 41 games, -1) and Gabriel Landeskog (26 points in 41 games, -8), on a team that is two points out of first place in their division after that loss to the Kings earlier tonight, with two games in hand on the two teams that occupy that position.

Grubauer is one of the few Avs players with experience winning championships: he's won the Memorial Cup with the Windsor Spitfires in 2010 and was a member of the Capitals when they won the Stanley Cup in 2018.

Here he is from his final season in the OHL, wearing the Kingston Frontenacs' black (away) uniform, on card #36 from In The Game's 2010-11 Between the Pipes set:

He signed it in blue sharpie in 2017-18, but I had lost track of it in my last move. You'll notice his equipment's not the same colour as his uniform; that's because both the Spitfires and the Caps' colour scheme is red, white and blue, while the Frontenacs chose to lean on the Boston Bruins' black and yellow/gold.