Brayden Point Jersey Card

Going back to yesterday's game, it was fitting that Brayden Point would score the quintuple-overtime game-winner - and apparently unsurprising to those who watched him grow up - seeing as he often seems to play well within the Tampa Bay Lightning's system, letting stars like Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Ryan McDonagh and Andrei Vasilevskiy take the spotlight, but every time he has a chance to stand out with a quick, nifty opportune play, he's there without fault.

It happened more often during the 2018-19 season, which was pretty much Point's coming out party, contributing 41 goals and 92 points for third-place (!) on the Bolts, behind Kucherov's 128 (41 goals) and Stamkos' 98 (45 goals), prompting the blogosphere and hockey websites' comments sections to erupt into thinking he was going to sign an $11M-a-year offer sheet, but he instead went with common sense, signing to a $6.75M cap hit over three years with the final year at $9M, meaning if Tampa wants to qualify him going forward, they're going to have t offer him a deal worth over $9.9M per - or risk losing him to free agency.

With the Covid situation bringing a stagnating cap, however, not many teams will have room to take on that kind of hit without giving anything in  return, so the Lightning may have some wiggle room to try a bold move like signing him a little below that.

This season, he had 25 goals and 64 points in 66 games, which is where I think his median will stand, with one or two other peaks above the 90-point mark, but mostly a very dependable, two-way point-per-game player is where I see him, manning a second line on a contending team.

And there has not really been a much more contending team than the one whose home uniform is this:

That's card #2 (Red Rainbow Jersey Parallel) from Upper Deck's 2019-20 Allure collection, featuring a decent-sized game-worn jersey swatch. I am still surprised I found this one for under $5 on Ebay considering how much packs of these went for on the market for $130 per box of 8 packs X 6 cards each, meaning a common card would normally come up to close to $3 on average, and I got a hit by a very good player for just a couple of bucks more.

I also bought a few common cards to test the set out, and I'm glad I didn't shell out for a whole box.