Marcel Cousineau Autograph Card

Sometimes, time plays tricks on you and you forget things; case in point: I would have bet all my earnings that Marcel Cousineau had been a Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick, but they merely signed him as a free agent when the Boston Bruins - who had chosen him with the 62nd-overall pick in 1991 - opted not to have him sign a contract after two losing seasons in the LHJMQ with the Beauport Harfangs and a losing post-season with the Drummondville Voltigeurs.

He posted losing season after losing season with the AHL's St. John's Maple Leafs, who were terrible, and the team had Félix Potvin in the NHL anyway, so they let him go, paving the way to his signing with the New York Islanders, although he mostly played with the Lowell Lock Monsters. They then traded him to the Los Angeles Kings (with Zigmund Palffy and Bryan Smolinski, for Olli Jokinen, Josh Green, and Mathieu Biron - and swap of draft picks).

Of course, he mostly played for the IHL's Long Beach Ice Dogs in his first year with the organization, then the Lock Monsters again and the Manchester Monarchs as the Kings switched their minor-league affiliates three times in a row. The end of the 1990s were good for him, statistically, as he proved he could stop 91% of shots in the minors but couldn't win a permanent job in the NHL, despite a 2.11 average with the Kings in 1999-2000. They did already have Stéphane Fiset and Jamie Storr, however.

He had a tremendous 2002-03 in Russia, playing for the Cherepovets Severstal and posting a 1.81 GAA, but he decided to come back home and play in Québec's LNAH for his final two seasons, first with the Verdun Dragons (2003-04, on a team that featured such forwards as Éric Lavigne, Éric Houde, and former Tampa Bay Lightning draft pick Marc Tardif, but whose games were mostly attended by people who wanted to see the two players who had more than 500 PIMs apiece, Jason Clarke and Joël Thériault), then with the Sorel-Tracy Mission (2004-05, sharing the net with Sébastien Caron).

Here he is wearing the Harfangs' black (away) Pittsburgh Penguins-influenced uniform on a signed insert card from Classic's 1991-92 Draft Picks set:

It's signed in blue sharpie, and numbered 1083/1100, which to some is "Extremely Limited".

Patrick Côté Autographed Card

Patrick Côté was a tough customer, and a good gamble for the Dallas Stars when they drafted him 37th overall in 1995. He had improved from 2 goals and 6 points (with 230 penalty minutes) in 48 games for the Beauport Harfangs in 1993-94 to a whopping 20 goals 20 assists (40 points) and 314 penalty minutes in 56 games in 1994-95, where he was also among the LHJMQ's best playoff performers with 16 points and 115 penalty minutes (!!!) in 17 post-season games.

The way the Stars saw it, he was already tough enough for the NHL, and he had a 1000% improvement in his goal scoring in just one year, so if he could improve just a little bit more each year in the AHL for the following 3 or 4 years, he'd be a legitimate full-time NHL power forward by his mid-twenties.

A  second-round pick may have been a tad high - he was chosen ahead of talented forward Christian Dubé (39th), regular point producer Jochen Hecht (49th), spectacular point-per-game AHLer and Euro-leaguer Pavel Rosa (50th), ''All-Star'' (as the Atlanta Thrashers' representative, if that counts) Petr Buzek (63rd), Sami Kapanen (87th), Marc Savard (91st), Miikka Kiprusoff (116th), Stéphane Robidas (164th), and Filip Kuba (192nd) - but he definitely deserved to be chosen. I would have picked him in the fourth or fifth round.

He played 105 NHL games split over 6 seasons with 3 teams (the Stars, the Nashville Predators and the Edmonton Oilers) and put up 377 penalty minutes to go with his lone goal and two assists; all three of his points came in 1998-99 with the Preds.

I probably saw him play as a member of the LNAH's Laval Chiefs (2001-06), but it was during his time with the Sorel-Tracy Mission (2007-08) that I managed to get this card signed by him, when I took my dad to see a game as a Christmas present:

It's from Classic's 1995-96 Hockey Draft 95 set (card #33), and shows him wearing the Harfang's white (home) uniform, which he signed in thick blue sharpie.

Martin Biron Autographed Card

I think he could have been a decent, consistent #1 goalie in the NHL, but unfortunately for Martin Biron, he was with the Buffalo Sabres overlapping both the Dominik Hasek and Ryan Miller eras, two of the best goalies of their generations (Hasek, in my opinion, trailing only Patrick Roy in the 90s - well ahead of Martin Brodeur, Ed Belfour and Curtis Joseph - and Miller in a top-5 that includes Henrik Lundqvist, Miikka Kiprusoff, Roberto Luongo and one of Tomas Vokoun or José Theodore for his own decade).

As a matter of fact, the Sabres had so much faith in Biron that they made him the 16th overall pick in 1995, in the first round despite having Hasek already in nets. The only goalie chosen before him was Jean-Sébastien Giguère. Both were nominated as the CHL's Goalie Of The Year in 1995 - Biron won.

In his first few years in Buffalo, Biron wore #00 - the same he wore in juniors, as can be attested by this card, #16 in Classic's 1995-96 Hockey Draft 95 set where he's sporting the Beauport Harfangs' black (away) jersey; however, a glitch in the NHL's statistics software forced a rule that limited jersey numbers to be between 1 and 98 (Wayne Gretzky's 99 was retired league-wide), at which point Biron switched to #43, which he still holds.

Apart from the numbers thing, Biron might also be remembered for his performance against my hometown Montréal Canadiens in 2007-08, when he dominated Carey Price in winning the series 4-1, never making less than 30 saves per game. His Philadelphia Flyers may have lost in the Conference Finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins, but his performance against the Habs was the most dominating of that year's playoffs.

After a brief stint with the New York Islanders, he moved on to be Lundqvist's backup with the New York Rangers, a position he still holds today. Or would, if there were a season.

I got him to sign this card in blue sharpie in the late 90s when he appeared at a hockey school where I was teaching. We played a scrimmage against one another that finished 15-12 for my team; as far as NHL players go, Patrick Lebeau scored 5 goals on him, while Benoit Hogue and Sylvain Turgeon each scored 3 on me.

I had a huge stash of this exact card (still do, actually, probably 35 or 40 of them), and had originally planned on getting more signed, but in the end I chickened out and was too shy to ask for more than a couple.