David Savard Autographed Card

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With apologies to the ghost of Taylor Hall, the biggest "get" at the 2021 NHL trade deadline has to be the trade that sent rugged defenseman David Savard to the Tampa Bay Lightning by way of the Columbus Blue Jackets retaining 50% of his salary and the Detroit Red Wings taking on 25% of their own for a fourth-round pick in the next draft. Columbus grabbed a 2021 first-rounder and a 2022 third-rounder. Detroit also unloaded Brian Lashoff to Tampa in the deal, which gives them even more depth and experience.

This sets the Bolts up as the heavy favourites to repeat as Stanley Cup champions, as Savard not only replaces last year's trade deadline rentals Kevin Shattenkirk and Zach Bogosian, but he's also an upgrade on both of them; despite slowing down a bit in the past couple of years and his offensive game giving way to a more robust defending acumen, the Team Canada alumnus (2015 World Championship gold with a perfect 10-0 record) remains a force, a legitimate top-four option and an ideal stay-at-home counterpart to, say, a Victor Hedman on the first unit, or the type of player who can make Mikhail Sergachev look like Hedman out there. And he's hungry for a Cup. And he's fresh off playing for John Tortorella for a long time, so he's disciplined and hard-working.

He makes an already perfect team even better, retaining its favourite status despite the upgrades the Vegas Golden Knights, Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers, Boston Bruins or Washington Capitals might try to pull.

Here he is wearing the Blue Jackets' blue (home) uniform, on card #400 from the 2016-17 O-Pee-Chee collection by Upper Deck:

He signed it in silver sharpie at the same time as the card I featured last year, I had just misplaced it when writing that post up.

David Savard Autographed Card

The Columbus Blue Jackets had lost 10 of their past 11 games while dealing with an incredible amount of injuries, but they kept hold of the Wild Card position tonight by defeating the Vancouver Canucks 5-3, overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the process. The Canucks' loss helps the Vegas Golden Knights, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames out West.

A key player on the Jackets since the 2014-15 season has been David Savard, an underrated defenseman who plays behind Seth Jones and Zach Werenski but would be a fist-pair defender on most NHL teams.

We're talking about a guy who is built like a cliché'd Canadian Lumberjack - 6'2" with a perfect stature, 230 pounds of muscle and a face that reads "no bullshit" and "no drama" at the same time - who doesn't make mistakes yet plays upwards of 20 rough minutes per night, like a mixture of Nicklas Lidstrom and Niklas Kronwall.

As the Jackets as a whole have taken a step back in terms of offensive production - last year's points leader on the team, Artemi Panarin, produced 87 points in 79 games while this year's leader, Pierre-Luc Dubois, may not hit the 60 mark - so has Savard, yet his PDO (shooting % + save percentage) is a solid 99.7%, which is fine on a bubble team that scores so little.

Internationally, he's only suited up for Team Canada once - at the 2015 World Championships - and the team went to have a perfect 10-0 record to win gold for the first time since 2007. He can't make it all that often because the Blue Jackets are always in the playoffs.

Here he is wearing Columbus' white (away) uniform, on card #297 from Upper Deck's 2017-18 O-Pee-Chee set:

He signed it in thick silver sharpie, which didn't leave him enough room to spell out his entire name. He did attempt to tag his jersey number (58) at the end, though.