Bryan Allen: Two Autographed Cards

I was sifting through my signed cards this evening and fell upon these two of Bryan Allen's early days, spanning the years of his being drafted as a high-touted prospect in the first round (4th overall, 1998) by the Vancouver Canucks to his climb in the minor hockey ranks leading to two World Juniors Team Canada berths (silver in 1999, out with an injury in 2000).

Fourteen NHL seasons and 721 regular-season games later, retiring at the tail end of the 2014-15 season having scored 29 goals with 107 assists for 136 points (and 839 penalty minutes), his career not so different from another fourth-overall pick's, Scott Lachance, including the fact that both played for the Canucks and Montréal Canadiens in their careers, both hanging up the blades after half a season in the AHL.

Allen was a solid defensive defenseman who could clear the front of the net and spend some time on the powerplay and penalty kill. His total ice time per game oscillated between 19 and 21 minutes per game in his prime and 16-18 before and after.

Here he is sporting his familiar #5 uniform for the Canadian national team, on card #401 from Upper Deck's 1997-98 Series 2 collection and Program Of Excellence (usually focusing on Canadian Juniors players) sub-set, wearing flip flops and shorts on a snowy hill that I suspect was behind an arena:

And here he is wearing the Canucks' white (home) uniform from the turn of the millennium, on card #478 from Upper Deck's 2005-06 Parkhurst set:

This white uniform is my second-favourite white from the Canucks, behind only the one they wore from 1989 until 1997.

I remember Allen signed these for me in thick blue sharpie, but I do not remember when, though I'm fairly certain it was after the season-long 2004-05 lockout, so likely during his time as an important member of the Florida Panthers (2006-11).

Bryan Allen: Two Autographed Cards

Here's a cool return I wasn't expecting when I got home (late) yesterday, over two years in the making, as I'd sent Bryan Allen these two cards when the Montréal Canadiens assigned him to the Hamilton Bulldogs in January 2015:

He signed them in blue sharpie and sent them from (presumably) his home in California.

While he hasn't officially retired yet, he did not play during the 2015-16 season. The former fourth-overall pick of the 1998 draft - behind Vincent Lecavalier, David Legwand and Brad Stuart and ahead of the likes of Vitali Vishnevski (5th), Rico Fata (6th), Manny Malhotra (7th), Nikolai Antropov (10th), Alex Tanguay (12th), Martin Skoula (17th), Dmitri Kalinin (18th), Robyn Regehr (19th), Simon Gagné (22nd), Jiri Fischer (25th), Scott Gomez (27th), Ramzi Abid (28th), Jonathan Cheechoo (29th), Andrew Peters (34th), Mike Fisher (44th), Mike Ribeiro (45th), Brad Richards (64th), Jason LaBarbera (66th), Erik Cole (71st), François Beauchemin (75th), Brian Gionta (82nd), Josef Vasicek (91st), Shawn Horcoff (99th), Jaroslav Spacek (117th), Andrew Raycroft (135th), Chris Neil (161st), Andrei Markov (162nd), Pavel Datsyuk (171st), Michael Ryder (216th), and Karlis Skrastins (230th) - played for parts of five seasons with the Vancouver Canucks before being part of the first Roberto Luongo trade, sending Allen, Alex Auld, and Todd Bertuzzi to the Florida Panthers for Luongo, the draft pick that became Sergei Shirokov and Lukas Krajicek.

It was with the Panthers that he would crack the 20-point barrier (25, in 2006-07), but the 6'5", 220-pound defender was mostly known as a stay-at-home defenseman, often cracking or nearing the 100-PIM mark.

After most of five seasons with the Panthers, he spent a year and a half with the Carolina Hurricanes before signing his final contract, a three-season deal with the Anaheim Ducks, who sent him to the Habs in his last year for oft-maligned forward Rene Bourque.

It therefore made sense to send him cards of his first and almost-last teams; here he is in the Canucks' 1990s dark (away) orca logo uniform, on card #298 from Topps' 2002-03 O-Pee-Chee set and Prospects sub-set, allowing me to use him as #5 in my Canucks Numbers Project:

And here he is wearing what was then the Ducks' alternate uniform and is now their home garbs, on card #15 from Panini's 2013-14 Score set:

Because it's the lone return I'm missing from my 2015-16 mailings, I thought this might be from Torrey Mitchell; the fact that it wasn't keeps me hopeful that that one may yet be coming.