Chris Drury Jersey Card

Chris Drury's had a busy spring, starting with being named co-GM of Team USA's selection at the World Championships (with Bill Guerin), then watching the New York Rangers block the Buffalo Sabres from interviewing him for their own vacant GM position, to finally being assigned to manage their AHL affiliate Hartford Wolf Pack.

It must be pretty wild to have two teams you've captained fight for your services...

Drury is the typical All-American: a Hobey Baker winner in the NCAA (with the Boston University Terriers), a Calder Trophy (rookie of the year) winner and Stanley Cup champion (with the Colorado Avalanche) and, as mentioned previously, captain of the Sabres (held jointly with Daniel Brière) and Rangers.

Now, he will have the opportunity to show what he can achieve in a managerial position, although most of the team's player personnel decisions will stem from the Rangers' top brass (President Glen Sather, GM Jeff Gorton and senior vice-president and assistant-GM Jim Schoenfeld), and the team's record will have a lot to do with injuries to the parent team.

Here's Drury wearing the Sabres' 1996-2006 white (home) uniform, on card #GJ-30 from Upper Deck's 2003-04 Bee Hive set and Game-Used Jersey sub-set:

It features a black game-worn jersey swatch (complete with a white stitch in the middle of it) from the forward who finished his career with 255 goals, 360 assists and 615 points in 892 regular-season games, and 89 points (47 goals, 42 assists) in 135 playoff games.

Henrik Zetterberg Jersey Card

If you know anything about me, you know I'm a romantic at heart. And not just beneath a gruff exterior - though I do have one - but I actually wear my heart on my sleeve at all times. I'm the type of guy who would drink a case of 24 beers in 24 hours at a rate of one per hour with friends in the summer, just to bask in the experience of spending an uninterrupted day of laid-back good times.

So when a scheduling quirk - a postponed game - made it so that Detroit Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg was going to play his 1000th NHL game on the final, farewell night of Joe Louis Arena, I almost cried. Then I saw a few of the tributes to the Joe and actually did:

Thanks for the memories, Joe. #Farewell2TheJoe pic.twitter.com/SikJyo60Lc

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) April 10, 2017

Henrik Zetterberg honored prior to playing in his 1,000th career game and the final game at Joe Louis Arena. #Z1000 #Farewell2TheJoe pic.twitter.com/k0RzDGpTke

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) April 10, 2017

Growing up in the 1980s, there was talk of Original Six teams and all, but most of them were a joke: the New York Rangers and Chicago Blackhawks hadn't won a Stanley Cup since before my parents were born, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins hadn't won since my parents were kids - although the Bruins came close in 1988 and 1990, falling to my Edmonton Oilers both times - and the Wings would sometimes fail to make the playoffs altogether in a division where four teams made it and the same number of teams usually played below .500. The Montréal Canadiens were the only Original Six team that remained among the league's prestigious clubs, though 1995 was just around the corner, and with it a decade of shame.

Pre-salary cap, when owner Mike Illitch bought the Wings - and the Detroit Tigers, really - he went all-out to have his teams be as best as possible, hiring the best people to make the best decisions to best represent his beloved city. The Wings were among the league's biggest spenders - with the Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers and Colorado Avalanche - and purchased themselves the last consecutive champion teams (1997 and 1998) and a 2002 championship by developping their own talent to build around, sure (Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom, Sergei Fedorov, Chris Osgood) but also signing the best available veterans who agreed to leave their egos at home and step into specific roles that went against everything individual achievement they may have accomplished in the past, including the likes of highest-scoring left winger Luc Robitaille, highest-scoring right winger Brett Hull, most over-rated right winger Brendan Shanahan, one of the best defensemen of all time in Chris Chelios, and former-star-goalies-for-hire Mike Vernon, Curtis Joseph and Dominik Hasek.

Lidstrom, Datsyuk and Zetterberg - along with a fine supporting cast - helped Detroit reach the third-longest consecutive playoff streak with 25 despite the salary cap era bringing forth unparalleled parity, a streak that ended this season. Now, Lidstrom's in the Hall Of Fame, Datsyuk is playing his final season(s) in Russia, and Zetterberg's 36 years old, which didn't stop him from leading the Wings in points with 68 in 82 games, good for 904 in 1000 games so far. He also has 120 in 137 playoff games.

Here he is wearing the Winged Wheel's white (then-home) uniform, on card #MM-HZ from Upper Deck's 2005-06 Bee Hive set and Matted Materials sub-set, which features a red game-worn jersey swatch:

Like a card I featured nearly four years ago, it shows both Zetterberg and Lidstrom (in the background), the Wings' back-to-back Swedish captains.

He's an Olympian gold (2006) and silver (2014) medalist with Team Sweden, and also holds all three medal types from the World Championships: gold (2006), silver (2003), and bronze (2001 and 2002).

Joe Sakic Jersey Card

It's been and will be an extremely busy summer for Colorado Avalanche former captain and current general manager Joe Sakic!

The biggest thing on his plate is probably re-signing RFA (restricted free agent) Tyson Barrie, one of the best young offensive defensemen in the league, who might be looking to a contract similar to that of teammate Erik Johnson, who now makes $6M per season.

In the meantime, Sakic - whose most pressing need is to improve his blue line - traded Nick Holden to the New York Rangers a week ago and signed free agents Joe Colborne - an improvement over Shawn Matthias, whom they themselves lost to free agency - as well as Patrick Wiercioch - whom the Ottawa Senators declined to make an offer to - and Fedor Tyutin, whom the Columbus Blue Jackets had just bought out.

Oh, and he traded goalie Reto Berra to the Florida Panthers in yet another puzzling move by their new GM Tom Rowe, giving way for Calvin Pickard to challenge Semyon Varlamov for ice time.

The Avs has definitely improved, but perhaps not enough to push the Minnesota Wild out of a playoff spot, and surely not enough considering both the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers also got better.

I'm also looking at one of Matt Duchene or Gabriel Landeskog to get traded this summer... probably Duchene.

So, chances are I'll be revisiting at least some of these names over the course of the summer.

In the meantime, here is card #JT-31 from Upper Deck's 2003-04 Bee Hive set (and Game-Used Jersey sub-set), showing the Avs' all-time leading scorer in their classic white (home) uniform with a burgundy swatch inserted into its design:

Here's a quick recap of Sakic's career, all with the same Avs/Québec Nordiques organization:

• 1641 points (625 goals and 1016 assists) in 1378 regular season games.
• 188 points (84 goals and 104 assists) in 172 playoff games.
• 41 points (22 goals and 19 assists) in 48 international games for Team Canada.
• Two Stanley Cups.
• 13 All-Star Games, with a record 16 ASG assists.
• An NHL record 8 playoff overtime goals.
• 3 First Team All-Star nods.
• A Conn Smythe, a Hart, a Lady Byng, a Lester B. Pearson, and an NHL Foundation Award.
• An Olympic All-Star Team nod.
• Gold medals at the Olympics (2002), World Championships (1994), World Cup (2004), and World Juniors (1988).

That, my friends, is an accomplished career!

Saku Koivu Bee Hive Jersey Card

So this is how it's going to be...

The captain-less Montréal Canadiens clinched a playoff spot by losing to the (also captain-less) Toronto Maple Leafs in overtime, earlier tonight. In the absence of a designated True Leader, the team's actual leaders, Andrei Markov, Michael Cammalleri, Brian Gionta and Maxim Lapierre tried to do everything themselves and couldn't get everybody on the team to rally together to help, so what we got were flashes of brilliance and a loss to the second-worst team in the league.

I'll be honest and admit the Habs were in control for most of the game, but the opponents played with more desperation, more passion - despite an evident imbalance in talent.

It kind of proves all of Saku Koivu's past nay-sayers wrong: both he and Alex Kovalev, when the situation demanded it, could step up - and most of the dressing room would follow suit, pushing together. They did had definite leadership skills - as do Markov, Cammalleri and Gionta, clearly - but the fact that they wore a 'C' on their jerseys added to their natural leadership, it signaled to the rest of the team ''we're all in this together, and they're the ones pointing the way''. Now, with the course of the ship still unidentified, the soldiers aren't certain which General to follow - all this at a time where the President (head coach Jacques Martin)'s orders and game system is clearly not working for the type of players he's dealing with, and in the decade we're in. It's like trying to fight with muskets in the computer-and-nuclear age...

All that for this: a 2005-06 Bee Hive jersey card (card #MM-SK, Matted Materials insert) of Saku Koivu, our last and longest-ever-in-tenure captain, by Upper Deck. Bee Hive was actually a brand of honey in Canada in the 50s and 60s that offered free hockey cards in their pots of honey, and most of their sets had a simple, framed design. These series are a tribute by Upper Deck, who figure an homage to an early set fits with the fact that they're also producing all of Bee Hive's former competitors' sets anyway, Parkhurst and O-Pee-Chee.

Ah, nostalgia!

Now name Markov captain so Gary Bettman has someone to hand the Cup to when we win it, goddamn it.