Alex Tanguay Jersey Card

Well, general manager Joe Sakic made some moves for the Colorado Avalanche at the trade deadline. What he really needed to do was shore up his defense, and maybe he did that by acquiring Éric Gélinas from the New Jersey Devils for a third-round pick; then again, maybe not.

Getting Shawn Matthias and Mikkel Boedker up front does nothing to change the perception that the Avs will need to win games 5-4 while relying on goalie Semyon Varlamov way too much.

And Boedker did cost two unsigned prospects (Kyle Wood and Connor Bleackley) as well as Alex Tanguay, a former teammate of Sakic's and head coach Patrick Roy on the 2001 Stanley Cup-winning team.

And though it can be argued that Tanguay was on a down slope with just 4 goals, 18 assists and 22 points in 52 games with the Avs this year, he had scored 22 just last season, finishing third on the team with 55 points. Also, most of the non-points metrics favour him over Boedker big-time, and even Bodker's regular stats line is inflated by the fact that he was playing nearly 19 minutes per game on the team's first line and still could only post 39 points in 62 games (third on the team, 9 points behind defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and just a single point ahead of Shane Doan who has appeared in 8 fewer games), with a team-worst -28 to go with it.

And with Sakic having repeatedly said in the past that he's open to Tanguay retiring as an Avs player, perhaps it opens the door to re-signing him next summer as a free agent, maybe closer to the league's minimum wage than the $3.5M he made this year.

Though he has played with the Montréal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning, I have trouble picturing him not suiting up for either the Avs or the Calgary Flames.

Speaking of which, here's a card that depicts him with both, showing him wearing the Avalanche's white (then-home) 1990s uniform (with a beautiful blue game-worn jersey swatch inserted therein) but listing him as a member of the Flames, on card #J-AT from Upper Deck's 2006-07 Black Diamond collection and Black Diamond Jersey sub-set:

Tanguay had 400 points in his first 450 games in Colorado, and all told currently stands at 488 in 589 games with the team; he also has 284 points in 342 games in Calgary, 41 in 50 games in Montréal, and 37 in 80 games in Tampa, for a grand total of 850 points in 1070 NHL games so far, plus another 59 in 98 playoff games, including 21 in 23 games in that Cup run.

He also scored just three days ago in Colorado's Stadium Series game against the long-time rival Detroit Red Wings. It was his final goal as an Av, wearing their finest uniform this year. Fitting, really.

Alex Tanguay: 6 Autographed Cards (Part 1)

One of the reasons which can explain why the Colorado Avalanche lost to the Minnesota Wild is injuries, and none was more important than Alex Tanguay's, as the nearly point-per-game winger played in only 16 games this season because of hip and knee injuries, though he still managed to collect 11 points.

A first-round pick of the Avalanche in 1998 (12th overall), he is one of the stand-outs of his draft class, along with Vincent Lecavalier (1st), Nikolai Antropov (10th), Robyn Regehr (19th), Simon Gagné (22nd), Scott Gomez (27th), Mike Ribeiro (45th), Brad Richards (64th), François Beauchemin (75th), Brian Gionta (82nd), Shawn Horcoff (99th), Andrei Markov (162nd), Pavel Datsyuk (171st), and Michael Ryder (216th).

Between 1999-2000 and 2005-06, he had three seasons with 77 points or more, and four with 25 or more goals despite only twice missing less than 10 games. In 2003-04, he was even third in the NHL for assists (54) despite only suiting up for 69 games. He also won the Stanley Cup, was a runner-up for the Calder trophy and was an All-Star in his first stint in Colorado. I have this card to show from that era, from Upper Deck's 2005-06 SP Authentic set (card #25), showing him with the team's white (then-home) uniform:

He was traded to the Calgary Flames on draft day 2006, and responded with an 81-point season in 2006-07, followed by a 58-point outing the next year, before requesting a trade out of town because coach Mike Keenan wouldn't let him have an offensive role. While this card is from later on, it still shows him with the Flames, so here it is:

It's from Upper Deck's always beautiful 2011-12 Artifacts set (card #64), and shows him with the Flames' classic red (now their third) jersey.

       (continued in the following post)

Alex Tanguay: 6 Autographed Cards (Part 2)

           (continued from the previous post)

Ironically, Alex Tanguay's trade request led him to the one place he always thought would be uncomfortable playing in: for the Montréal Canadiens. Growing up a Québec Nordiques fan - like myself - he had learned to hate the Habs; additionally, when the Nordiques left for Colorado, the Habs being the last French-Canadian team standing meant there was added pressure for French-Canadians to do well in their uniform, and it wasn't something he wanted to contemplate thinking about in his early years in the NHL, though by 2008 he was ready to give it a shot.

He arrived right at the team's Centennial season, where expectations were high: the fans were promised no less than a Stanley Cup. Starting on the second line, then falling to injury, Tanguay would be combined with superstars Alex Kovalev and Saku Koivu on the top line for the last while of Guy Carbonneau's coaching term, becoming one of the best-producing lines in the league over those few weeks. Tanguay even finished 4th in team scoring despite only appearing in 50 games.

But because the season didn't end with a Cup, most of the veterans were let go and a total of 13 players were replaced in the off-season, Tanguay being one of them. Still I now have four cards to show for my Habs Numbers Project, starting with these three in the team's white (away) uniform, all of them - of course - with the commemorative Centennial patches on the shoulders:

All of them are action shots and manufactured by Upper Deck. The card on the left is from the beautiful (though less than in other seasons) 2008-09 Ice set (card #3); the one in the middle, card #491, is from the 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee set (a cool foil variant); and the card on the right is from the 2009-10 Victory set (card #107).

Also from UD's 2009-10 Victory, this card from the Stars Of The Game sub-set (#SG30) shows him wearing the Habs' classic red (home) uniform (with the Centennial patches):

After a one-season stint with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Tanguay went back to the Calgary Flames for three seasons, before they sent him back to the Colorado Avalanche in his third career draft-day trade.

I had sent him these six cards and a fan letter on March 11th, 2014 (care of the Avs), and received all of them back, signed in black sharpie with jersey numbers tagged at the end (sometimes 13, sometimes 40, not always matching the number on the card!) on Wednesday, April 23rd (2014) - a cool 50-day return. They're all beautiful cards, and I'm glad I got to feature him in the uniforms I mostly watched him play in - as well as scratch #13 off my Habs Numbers Project.

Alex Tanguay Jersey Card

I wrote about another Alex Tanguay jersey card two and a half years ago, when he had just returned to the Calgary Flames. Since then, he's had a 22-goal, 69-point campaign in 2010-11 (in 79 games), and 49 points in 64 games last year. He has also scored a goal so far tonight.

He is three assists short of 500 in his career, and has 59 points in 98 career playoff games - and I predicted that the Flames would make them this year, so I'm guessing he'll be adding to that total. With the Flames, he's 1-7-8 in 13 playoff games.

This card (#FF-AT in the series) is from Upper Deck's 2005-06 Ice set, one I eagerly await every year. It and Artifacts are the two best-looking hockey sets ever made, and improve each year. The white jersey swatch is guaranteed to have been used in an NHL game.

Alex Tanguay Jersey Card

Alex Tanguay: smooth skater, adept playmaker, capable scorer. Stanley Cup winner. A definite first-line winger when he's on his game, but seems to have fallen off it since his attempt at coming back too soon from an injury while playing with the Habs two years ago. His experience with the Tampa Bay Lightning last season was one to forget.

This card, from Upper Deck's 2008-09 Series 1 set (UD Game Jersey sub-set) has him in his Calgary Flames uniform - as is the patch on the card - but the team logo is of the Montréal Canadiens, where he ended for that season after agreeing to a trade for two high draft picks. Unfortunately, just as he had locked the left wing position on the team's first line with Saku Koivu and Alex Kovalev - actually being among the most productive top lines in the league for a couple of weeks there - until he suffered a shoulder injury on a cheap-shot hit by Evgeny Artyukhin, one that should have ended his season and he should have taken time to recover from properly, instead of coming back at the insistence of GM Bob Gainey.

And now, he's back in Calgary, at the bargain price of $1.7M, one of two comeback kids, with Olli Jokinen. I don't know if those moves will make the Flames contenders again, but they're sure safer bets on a first line than Matt Stajan, that's for sure (with the added bonus of never having played for Toronto).