Corey Perry Swatch Card

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Let me preface this by saying that Corey Perry's production this season with the Montréal Canadiens has exceeded expectations for a banged-up 35-year-old, for a player signed to $750K for a single season and for a player who had to go through waivers to be put on the taxi squad to start the season, as a healthy scratch for the opening game. Just like Michael Frolik.

He's had games where he's been a game-breaker, but he's also had games where he's been largely invisible, tired.

After stepping in to help a struggling powerplay under former head coach Claude Julien, Perry pretty much just stayed on despite the team middling in 21st position in that regard, an accepted fact like Daylight Savings Time. What should have happened before the Habs blew their allocated post-trade deadline call-up limits was alternating him and Frolik so whoever slotted in would give it their all knowing they didn't have to keep any energy for the next game.

Interim head coach Dominique Ducharme is on a tight leash: he doesn't have a contract for next season, but he also doesn't owe his veterans anything. He should have the leeway to make bold moves and think outside the box, unlike Julien, who has historically preferred benching and punishing his rookies and sophomores for every minor mistake they made while giving older guys the benefit of the doubt, usually with disappointing results.

And yet there are Perry, Jonathan Drouin, Shea Weber, Carey Price, Eric Staal et al., getting their regular shifts in despite younger players outperforming them, in the hopes that they'll turn their season around at some point.

Considering the team was the last one invited to last season's post-season play-in and had missed out on the playoffs the previous three seasons, it's a trend you would have hoped would have been bucked with a new coach, a fresh face, a new message. So either Ducharme's been told directly by GM Marc Bergevin to toe the company line or he feels it's his best bet for an extension; either way, it's short-sighted, and he's not showcasing anything special for any of the other 30 (soon to be 31) teams to keep him in mind for their future vacant coaching jobs.

And I mean all of that specifically out of respect for the former Hart and Rocket Richard Trophy winner, as attested from this card commemorating his heyday:

That's card #1 from the Banner Season sub-set of Panini's 2011-12 Limited collection, featuring a two-colour stitch from a game-worn jersey swatch.

Perry has won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks, played in a Final with the Dallas Stars last season, and has two Olympic gold medals with Team Canada (2010 and 2014), World Championship gold (2016, as captain), a Canada Cup (2016), World Juniors gold (2005) and a Memorial Cup (2004-05).

Pekka Rinne Swatch Card

Today seems like the perfect day to feature the first of a handful of Pekka Rinne cards I'll showcase throughout the summer, if only because earlier today (or tomorrow depending in which time zone you are!) Team Switzerland took their World Championship game against Team Finland into a 2-2 tie-breaker (which Finland eventually won in a shootout), breaking Rinne's 170-minute shutout streak in the third period - that's right, he went nearly three games without allowing a single goal.

So far in the tournament, Rinne has 2 shutouts, a 1.23 GAA and a .944 save percentage. Not bad for a goalie who only played 26 games this year (two of them with the Milwaukee Admirals) because of a serious injury and whom some experts are saying is ''on the decline''... Personally, I'm of the opinion that you don't take someone off their pedestal just because another one seems like he is on the rise; you wait until the established, stable performers are no longer able to sustain the pace and play themselves out of contention - like Martin Brodeur, who hasn't been the same since at least 2010.

Rinne is a two-time Vezina finalist - considered to have had one of the three best season-long performances twice - and a Second Team All-Star. He finished in the top-5 for goals-against average twice, and his regular-season statistics (2.39 GAA and .918 save percentage) are almost identical to his playoff stats (2.41, .916), so he cannot be considered to cave under pressure or when playing against better opposition (the playoffs feature the 16 best teams, out of 30, of the regular season).

At 6'5'' and 210 pounds, it has made sense so far for him to play a butterfly style, falling to his knees and covering the lower portion of the net with the pads, with a long reach to poke check. He and Henrik Lundqvist (two of the five best goalies in the world, sure) are mostly responsible for the current trend of goaltenders holding their catching glove almost straight up to try to cover the top corner, a style I don't stop the kids I teach (at the pee-wee or bantam levels) from using, but one I don't believe in, in the long run, because it takes the emphasis out of keeping one's reflexes sharp, and is more vulnerable to shots fired in the middle of the net (two to three feet from the ground) while only covering the oft-missed four-foot-high shot (assuming the goalie is in position, if not, he's just covering empty space); it's also less of a natural move - and therefore less efficient - to bring one's arms down quickly than to lift it up. ''Whatever works for you'', though, is what I ultimately say and work around.

Today's card also serves as a bit of a eulogy, as I learned this week that Panini has lost its license to produce NHL cards - Upper Deck has again negotiated a backdoor deal giving them exclusivity - and I will thus lose some of my favourite sets, chief among them Score.

But this card of the Nashville Predators super-stopper is from Panini's 2011-12 Limited (card #12, the Banner Season sub-set, numbered 35/99) and shows him wearing the team's dark blue (then-home, much better than the current yellow one despite the piping) uniform:

It provides a nice view of his usual stance.