Josef Beranek: 2 Autographed Cards

As I mentioned when I initially made my list for my Oilers Numbers Project, I was fairly certain I had a signed card of Josef Beranek's with the Edmonton Oilers, but I cannot seem to be able to get my hands on it, no matter which box I look into.

Still, I managed to find two where he's with the Philadelphia Flyers, tonight's guests in town, as they were facing the Montréal Canadiens at the Bell Centre:

Beranek was the Oilers' fourth-round pick (78th overall) in 1989, the year Mats Sundin was chosen first overall by the Québec Nordiques. There were a few very good players left from the third round onwards, such as Olympians Rob Zamuner (45th), Nicklas Lidstrom (53rd, yeah, I know), Kris Draper (62nd), Robert Reichel (70th), Pavel Bure (110th), Anatoli Semenov (120th), Vladimir Malakhov (191st), Arturs Irbe (196th), and Evgeny Davydov (235th), as well as All-Star Donald Audette (183rd).

Beranek had a knack for beginnings; upon being traded from the Oilers to the Flyers midway through the 1992-93 season, he scored 10 goals in his first 29 games in Philadelphia, ending with 13 in 40 with the team and 15 goals (and 33 points) in 66 games in total. At the beginning of the 1993-94 season, he went on an even hotter streak, with no less than 18 goals in his first 23 games (including an 8-game goal streak), but finishing with 28 goals and 48 points in 80 games that year.

He signed both cards in ball-point pen in the mid-1990s; here's the first one, in his own zone in from of goalie Tommy Soderstrom (I had the same Jofa helmet as Soderstrom's at the time), from Score's 1993-94 Score (Canadian Bilingual Edition) set, with card #439 in the collection:

And here he is moving in on the Washington Capitals' Don Beaupre, from Pinnacle Brands' 1994-95 Score set (card #77 in the collection):

On both cards, he's wearing the Flyers' orange uniform from my youth, with the black sleeves and white arms with black lines, a truly classic look.

The Czech winger retired in 2010 after nine seasons with Slavia Praha (Prague) of the Czech League.

Jarrod Skalde Autographed Card

I have featured Jarrod Skalde twice before (here and here), focusing on his playing career and unique career path, spanning 19 seasons with a total of 29 teams in 8 leagues and 6 countries.

After retiring from the game, he became a head coach, first as a player/coach with the Bloomington PrairieThunder of the IHL, then winning a championship and best coach award in the ECHL with the Cincinnati Cyclones (a team he'd played for in the IHL in the 1990s) before starting as an assistant and graduating to head coach with the AHL's Norfolk Admirals. As the Admirals' parent team - the NHL's Anaheim Ducks - decided to move their team closer to home to become the AHL iteration of the San Diego Gulls (a team he's played for in the 1990s when it was in the IHL), he and the team agreed to part ways.

It's unclear whether he was tired of moving his family around (though in March, he seemed pleased to move back to an area he and his wife had loved) and/or the Ducks had found the perfect scapegoat for finishing with a 27-39-10 record with a team whose top talent was either in the NHL (John Gibson, Emerson Etem) or injured (Max Friberg, Chris Wagner, Nicolas Kerdiles) - but the fact remains that he is now currently unemployed.

I'm fairly confident he'll find work soon enough - or whenever he's ready, at least; it's what he's always done.

Here he is wearing the New Jersey Devils' white (then-home) 1980s and early-1990s uniform (with red and green as highlight colours instead of red and black), from Score's 1991-92 (Canadian) set (card #282, part of the Top Prospect sub-set), signed in-person in the 1990s in black sharpie:

Frank Pietrangelo: 6 Autographed Cards

As a goalie for the first half of my life, I modeled my playing style after those of Patrick Roy (like most Quebecers) and Sean Burke, as previously mentioned. Combining their butterfly techniques and rapid glove-side reflexes came to me naturally, but there were two others that influenced how I played: Ron Hextall, for his stick-handling and aggressiveness (I was always the most penalized goalie in the league and was the lone goalie-enforcer in the LHJMQ in 1995-96 when I quit playing), and Frank Pietrangelo, another fast glove, whose knack for appearing twice as large as he actually was always impressed me, like Bruce Banner becoming The Hulk when a shooter appeared. All four also used a Brian's glove for a fair chunk of their careers, and so did I...

Despite going the American College route, which was rare for Canadian players, Pietrangelo was drafted in the fourth round (63rd overall) by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1983, and yet he remained with the University Of Minnesota Golden Gophers (yes, the team Herb Brooks coached in the 1970s) for three more seasons before moving onto the Pens' IHL farm team, the Muskegon Lumberjacks, where he appeared in 35 regular-season games and 15 more in the playoffs in his rookie year in the pros.

The next three seasons were spent moving from the Penguins to the Lumberjacks, playing very well in the IHL (GAA around 3.00 in the high-scoring 1980s, and a spectacular 30-6-4 winning record) and playing mostly well in the NHL but with some games where he, like other goalies of that era, was put in terrible circumstances, so his GAA was around 4.00, his save percentage around .870, but his wins-losses record was okay for a back-up at 22-20-2.

He spent all of the 1990-91 season in Pittsburgh, sharing the back-up duties with Wendell Young, behind Tom Barrasso, and winning the Stanley Cup. Many hockey fans (particularly in Pittsburgh) remember him for The Save on Peter Stastny, staving off elimination while Barrasso was nursing an injury:

For my money, though, and as a fan of two Adams-division teams growing up (the Québec Nordiques and Montréal Canadiens), it was during his time with the Hartford Whalers backing up Burke that I not only got to see the most of Pietrangelo, but that I saw him at the top of his game, a steadying presence on sub-par (to say the least) teams. The team finished out of the playoffs in both of his full seasons in New England, with Paul Holmgren (a decent NHL-caliber general manager, but average coach whose record was 30-63-8 in Pietrangelo's tenure in Hartford, and 83-126-22 with the Whalers in total with no playoff participation in 4 seasons) at the helm.

He had a spectacular seven-game series against the Habs in 1991-92, stopping 95 of 99 shots in the final two games, including 53 in a double-overtime loss in the series clincher.

After playing a part of the locked-out 1994-95 season with the IHL's Minnesota Moose, Pietrangelo set his sights on Europe, first with the Bolzano-Bozen Foxes (1996-97) and HC Asiago (1997-98) in Italy, then the Kaufbeuren Eagles in Germany (1997-98), followed by three seasons in England with the Manchester Storm (1998-2001), where he was named Player Of The Month in December 1998.

Upon retiring, he moved back to his hometown of Niagara Falls, Ontario, where he is involved in local youth programs, chief among them the awesome Niagara Bauer Hockey Challenge, where 250 teams from 11 countries in 35 age and skills categories compete in a tournament attended by NHL, AHL, Junior Leagues and U.S. College scouts and coaches, providing kids with an extra (or sometimes a very first) opportunity to progress, on the ice and/or academically.

I sent him these 6 cards and a fan letter on March 13th, 2014, and got them all back, signed in black sharpie with his jersey number (40) tagged at the end, on March 21st, 2014. Though they are from just two different seasons, they show the changes in modernizing their uniforms that the Whalers went through in the early 1990s, starting with the ones they wore throughout my childhood, first with the white (home) uniform:

They are both technically variants of the same card by Pinnacle Brands, the one on the left being from the 1992-93 Score (American) set and the one on the right from the 1992-93 Score (Canadian) set; both bear #535.

The next card shows him wearing the green (away) uniform, in the same stance (ready for a face-off) as the first one, from Pro Set's 1992-93 Pro Set (card #64):

That stance is part of what I meant when I mentioned by his taking up twice as much room as he should in front of the net, with his arms forming a diamond with his body, in his half-ready mode. It's even more obvious on the next card, where he just seems to pop out of the net, looking at the puck like a bear would an oncoming salmon, shoulders perfectly aligned with the cross bar:

The card on the left is from Topps' 1993-94 Stadium Club set (card #272), the brand's highest-end set of the day, while the one on the right is from Topps' 1993-94 Premier (card #287), which was a premium brand when released under the O-Pee-Chee banner but fell a tad short when re-branded to Topps. If you're curious about his pose in the second card, it's taken during warm-ups, where he had a habit of visualizing top-corner glove saves while stretching his groin (the same pose can be seen on other cards). Both cards show the next-generation Whalers white (home) uniforms, with silver/grey added as a highlighting colour to the classic palette of white and green.

Which brings us to perhaps the prettiest Whalers uniform, where they changed the primary colour from green to navy blue, with green and silver acting as highlighters, from Upper Deck's 1993-94 Parkhurst (card #352):

It's also the one card with different masks represented, with the best one of the front (above), and the runner-up on the back:

Like Roy, he switched from Brian's to Koho in 1992-93...

6 of 6, in 8 days. I really liked him before, I think I like him even better now! By the way, if you think you recognize his name but are unfamiliar with early-1990s hockey, yes, he is related to current St. Louis Blues star defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, who is his cousin's son.

Sylvain Lefebvre: 9 Autographed Items (Part 1: The Habs)

There haven't been many returns so far this half-season (partly because I haven't sent out all that much stuff), and a few of them have been incompletes (where I sent more than I got back), but this 9/7 return probably makes up for all of them!

I'd sent Sylvain Lefebvre these 6 cards and one sticker on my mom's birthday - January 24th - and got them back just over two months later, on April 5th, 2013, all signed in black sharpie and bearing the correct jersey numbers, with two extra signed index cards.

Lefebvre started his career with the powerhouse Montréal Canadiens of the late 1980s, arriving the season following a Stanley Cup Finals berth (and loss to the Calgary Flames). All of these cards show him wearing the Habs classic red (then-away) uniform, first these two:

On the left, card #159 in Topps' 1990-91 O-Pee-Chee set, showing him duringa  pre-game warm-up; the card on the right is from Topps' 1990-91 Bowman set (card #48 in the set that stood out because the stats on the back were broken down by opposing teams), showing Lefebvre getting ready for a face-off. Both of these sets were considered lower-end cards at the time, but are now considered 'classics'.

Next are two are from then-middle-end sets, now not even worth the paper they were printed on:

The card on the left is from Pro Set's 1992-93 Parkhurst set (card #307 in the series, with the NHL's 75th anniversary patch on the jersey), a set that was so over-glossed the cards have become sticky with age; opening a pack today requires separating groups of 2 or 3 cards that may or may not lose ink in the process. The card on the right is from Score's inaugural 1990-91 Score Canadian (Bilingual) set (card #307).

And now another piece of history, a 1.5x2 inch sticker from Panini's 1990-91 Panini Hockey sticker set (#59 in the series):

For 4 or 5 straight seasons, I managed to complete the whole sticker book. My dream was to have the books signed by all the players - an impossible task now, not just because some of the players are deceased, but also because it's nearly impossible to get a Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky or Mark Messier autograph without resorting to murder, kidnapping, running a charity, or all of the above.

(continued in the following post)

Jean-Jacques Daigneault: 3 Autographed Cards

Jean-Jacques ''J.J.'' Daigneault held an NHL record for a while, but Mike Sillinger broke it prior to the 2006-07 season. Which one, you may ask? That of having played for the most NHL teams in their careers. Daigneault is now tied for second (with Michel Petit), with 11.

Drafted 10th overall in 1984 by the Vancouver Canucks (behind Mario Lemieux, Kirk Muller, Shayne Corson, Al Iafrate and Petr Svoboda, and ahead of Gary Roberts, Kevin Hatcher, Scott Mellanby, Stéphane Richer, Jeff Brown, Ray Sheppard, Gary Suter, Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille, baseball legend Tom Glavine, and a goalie by the name of Patrick Roy), he only played two seasons in the rain before getting traded to the Philadelphia Flyers, where he made it to the Stanley Cup final in his very first season there, even scoring a game-winning goal in the Finals. Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers proved to be too strong, though.

Which is fine, because as a member of the Montréal Canadiens, he beat Gretzky's and Robitaille's Los Angeles Kings to win the Cup in 1993, with Muller and Roy as teammates.

At the end of the road, Daigneault was one game short of playing in 900 regular-season NHL games and another game short of 100 playoff games. He scored 53 goals and amassed 250 points in his career.

As a Hab, I remember him as a calming presence on the blue line, able to chip in with some powerplay time. I was surprised to see him getting traded for a career backup goalie in Pat Jablonski, but I don't run or own the team, so I let it slide.

Unlike other players, though, I didn't follow Daigneault's career much when he left town, in part because when the Habs descended into meaninglessness by trading Roy, I was in NYC getting my music career going and my interest had waned. At least I kept my cards...

I hadn't noticed when I sent him these, but all of these cards have a link to the NHL's 75th anniversary. First, from the 1991-92 Series 1 set from Upper Deck (card #170), sporting the Canadiens' classic red (away) jersey with the assistant captain's 'A':

Here he is wearing the team's white (home) uniform with a 75th anniversary patch, from Pro Set's 1992-93 Parkhurt (French Canadian Version) set (card #312):

And a ''throwback'' jersey from Score's 1992-93 Score (Canadian), card #311 (look at those intense eyes!):

Sure, this jersey looks a lot like the regular red one, but one quick look at the sleeves will reveal the team's logo in place of numbers...

I sent him these 3 cards and a fan letter on March 19th, 2012, and got them back on August 15th, 2012, signed in black sharpie with his jersey number (48) tagged at the end. Funny thing: I sent these care of the Connecticut Whale, where he was an assistant coach, and that's where they were sent back from (postmarked August 11th), but he was named the Canadiens' assistant coach on June 29th, a story similar to that of my Patrice Brisebois cards (also a 1993 Cup winner).

Patrice Brisebois: 7 Autographed Items (Part 1)

Wednesday was a good day, despite being too sick to go to work. Instead, I was here to greet the postman for this Derek Stepan card and these 7 autographed Patrice Brisebois items, all signed in black sharpie with his jersey number tagged at the end:

Much has been said about Brisebois' career, particularly with the Montréal Canadiens, and especially the end of his first stint with the Habs as he was constantly booed every time he hit the ice and didn't score, mostly because two journalists thought he was (grossly) overpaid. At the end of the day, though, more than 1000 NHL games played, a Stanley Cup, two World Juniors gold medals, a CHL defenseman of the year award, three Memorial Cup finals (including an All-Star Team nod), over 600 career NHL points (for a defenseman...), and eight 30-point seasons (and those in which he didn't were injury-plagued) speak for themselves: he was a fine hockey player.

Perhaps not always in his rightful position (it did take the Habs trading Éric Desjardins and Mathieu Schneider to make him the team's #1 defenseman where he would have been fine at #3 with some powerplay time), but always giving everything he had, constant (good for a point every other game), honest, courageous (you'd have to be to be able to step on the ice knowing half the arena expects you to be the team's scapegoat)... in any other town he would have been one of the team's legends.

But in The City Where Hockey Legends Are Made, with the most Cups, the most Hall Of Fame players, 8 of the 10 best goalies of all time, the most media scrutiny, and two cultures (French Quebecers and Anglo-Canadians) who for a century almost only shared a love for hockey, a 'risky' top defenseman was going to get called for the mistakes he made in his own end. I think even Paul Coffey and Brian Leetch would have faced the same critics.

And yet he still managed to have some decent plus/minus seasons, with +10 (1995-96, the year Patrick Roy left at mid-season), +16 (1997-98) and +17 (2003-04).

The biggest gripe against him was probably that, at 6'2'' and 210 lbs, he avoided physical play. So? Size doesn't dictate willingness to get hurt. I fondly remember games at the Philadelphia Spectrum where Saku Koivu, who is probably shorter than his listed 5'10'', would be the only Habs player willing to hit a Flyer, and he'd go toe-to-toe in the corners with none other than Eric Lindros. Many tall guys prefer a slicker game than a rough-and-tumble one. I'll tell you this much, until the arrival of Andrei Markov, no Canadiens player could pass like Brisebois, and he was one of the team's fastest players.

Onto the cards...

His true rookie card is this one, from Upper Deck:

He's sporting the Team Canada jersey at the World Juniors. It's card #454 of the 1990-91 Upper Deck collection. He was wearing jersey #24 at the time.

The next two cards are also considered by some as rookie cards, although they come a year later:

The card on the left is from Score's 1991-92 Score Canadian set (card #272), while the one on the right is from UD's 1991-92 Upper Deck set (card #442, Star Rookie sub-set). He's sporting the #43 jersey he spent most of his career wearing, on the Habs' red (away) jersey.

I also have a #43 in the white jersey to show:

It's from Topps' 2002-03 O-Pee-Chee set (card #41).

(continued in the next post)

Andrew Cassels: 6 Autographed Cards (Part 2)

(continued from the previous post)

The Hartford Whalers, on the other hand, despite the presence of Murray Craven and John Cullen, gave Cassels a chance to blossom, pairing him with  soon-to-be All Star Game fastest man Geoff Sanderson, for a 5-year partnership during which Cassels would always lead the team in assists.

The following cards represent this part of his career:

The card on the left, seeing him sport the Whalers' white (home) jersey, is from Pro Set's flagship 1991-92 Pro Set set (card #395), while the card on the right shows him in the green (away) uniform, from Topps' 1991-92 O-Pee-Chee Premier set (card #72), a set that for a while had a Jaromir Lagr rookie card worth upwards of $30 - and I had 15 of them. It seemed every other pack I opened contained a Jagr...

I also have two of the same uniform with the NHL's 75th anniversary patch on them:

The card on the left is from Pro Set's 1992-93 Parkhurst (French-language version) collection (card #285) of which I purchased 5 wax boxes a decade ago for $10 TOTAL at a Walmart - and the one on the right is from Score's 1992-93 Score (Canadian) set (card #323).

I also sent this one in, with the mid-90s Whalers uniform, featuring shades of grey, perhaps not 50 of them, but a few:

I like how the back of the card shows the home version (white) and a mullet, while the front shows the away (blue). It's from Fleer's 1993-94 Fleer Ultra set (card #33).

I sent these cards to Cassels' home on April 3rd, 2012 and got them all back, signed in black sharpie, on June 29th. They might be the last ones he signed with that pen, because it looks like it's fading on a few of these, and I think it gives them a certain charm.

After playing with the Whalers during their final season, Cassels played for two unsuccessful seasons with the Calgary Flames, before playing three years with the Vancouver Canucks during which he led the team in assists every year. After that, he was reunited with Sanderson with the Columbus Blue Jackets, again posting terrific stats (20-48-68 in his first 79-game season), before the lockout forced him to try out for the Washington Capitals in 2005-06, where he only played 31 games (4-8-12).

He may not have had a Hall of Fame career, but 732 points and 528 assists in 1015 NHL games is mighty fine. Like Ray Whitney though, he had to be a journeyman to amass those statistics and always be on the move. He played for a WHA remnant team (also now a defunct team!), two Canadian teams, a 70s expansion team and a Bettman-expansion team; all that was missing was an Original Six...

Craig Simpson: 4 Autographed Cards

Score another one for the Edmonton Oilers!

I sent Craig Simpson these four cards and a fan letter on November 25th, 2010, care of the CBC's Audience Relations department, and got them all back, signed in black sharpie with his jersey number (18) added, on September 13th, 2011. For a broadcaster who travels following Western Canadian teams, that's a pretty good turnaround.

Simpson is a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Oilers (1987-88 and 1989-90) and holds career NHL records for best shooting percentage both in the regular season (23.66%) and the playoffs (33.65%). He has 68 points in 67 career playoff games, proving he was good under pressure. He scored a career-high 43 goals in a mere 59 games in 1987-88 (he had 13 more in 19 playoff games) and had a career-high 76 points he following season with 35 goals in 66 games.

He also played for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres, but I mostly remember him as an Oiler, skating on a line with Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson.

Sports must have played a major part of his childhood, as his mother was Canadian Olympian Marion Simpson, his brother is hockey player Dave Simpson and his sister Christine covers hockey for Sportsnet. His son Dillon Simpson was drafted by the Oilers in the 2011 draft.

Craig got into a bit of controversy when participating in Battle Of The Blades, a Dancing With The Stars-like skating competition on CBC. Paired with iconic gold-medal Olympian Jamie Salé, he won the competition, however when it was revealed the two had had an affair, it broke both their couples apart.

Now, onto the cards.

This card shows Simpson wearing the Oilers' legendary away jersey and is from Score's 1992-93 Score (American) set (card #260). The card below (also #260) is from the 1992-93 Score (Canadian) set and shows him in the Oilers' home uniform. I like that Score went through the trouble of making two distinct sets that year rather than just have one be bilingual and not the other.

The next two cards also show Simpson in the Oilers' blue jersey:

The card on the left is from Pro Set's 1990-91 Pro Set collection (card #95) while the one on the right is from Score's inaugural 1990-91 Score set (card #58). While I always liked the initial Score set, I'm getting re-acquainted with the first Pro Set one and am liking it again as well. Its design was original and appealing - it's too bad it was over-abundant and is now worth nothing.