Gilbert Dionne: 6 Autographed Cards (Part 1)

Gilbert Dionne has always - unfairly - been compared to his older brother, Marcel Dionne. I mean, sure, they share parents, but they're 19 years apart, and the elder brother is a Hall Of Famer - that's putting undue pressure on the youngest.

Not only did they not have the same playing styles, but Marcel was short at 5'8'' and 185 pounds, while Gilbert was a tall and lanky 6'1'' and 190 pounds. And while Marcel won the Art Ross trophy, the Lester B. Pearson award, two Lady Byngs, was second of all time in goals, assists and points when he retired and holds the third-most 100-point seasons in NHL history (behind Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux), played in 8 All-Star Games and was on four end-of-season All-Star Teams, won three World Championship bronze medals (1978, 1983 and 1986) and one Canada Cup with Team Canada, one trophy he could never get his hands on was the Stanley Cup; Gilbert won it with the Montréal Canadiens in just his second season, in 1992-93.

He had also had a fine rookie season, making the All-Rookie Team and finishing second among rookies in powerplay goals despite having played less than half the season in the NHL; indeed, he had 21 goals and 34 points in just 39 games with the Habs, after spending the first half of 1991-92 with the AHL's Fredericton Canadiens.

I do have this card from his days in Fredericton, from Classic's 1992-93 Pro (Hockey) Prospects set (card #87),  wearing an identical replica of the Habs' classic red uniform:

For comparisons' sake, here he is wearing the Habs' regular uniform, with the NHL's 75th Anniversary patch thrown in for good measure, on card #92 from Pro Set's 1992-93 Pro Set collection:

Eerie, right?

Pro Set also produced these two cards of his wearing the Canadiens' white (then-home) uniform, from the 1992-93 Parkhust set (French Canadian Edition):

On the left is his regular (Rookie) card, #313 in the set; on the right is his League Leaders sub-set card as the rookie with the best shooting percentage, which is #447 in the collection.

The last three also count towards fulfilling #45 of my Habs Numbers Project.

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Gilbert Dionne: 6 Autographed Cards (Part 2)

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Gilbert Dionne's true rookie card, however, is this one, from Upper Deck's 1991-92 Series 1 set (card #448, part of the Star Rookie sub-set), showing him not just wearing the Montréal Canadiens' white (home) uniform, but also #22, which he has never worn in an actual game:

I had written him at home on March 3rd, 2014, and received all cards back on September 15th, 2014, a cool 195 days later, signed in black sharpie, with his uniform number (45) tagged to each - even the cards where he's sporting #22. This brings my 2013-14 statistics to 34/74 cards returned.

I respected him so much as a member of the 1993 Stanley Cup-winning Habs team that I even went to see him play with the IHL's Cincinnati Cyclones in the late 1990s.

He played three full seasons and bits of two others in Montréal, scoring 60 goals and 130 points in 196 games; he was part of the infamous trade that sent Éric Desjardins and John LeClair to the Philadelphia Flyers for Mark Recchi, but barely played 22 games with the Flyers over two seasons, not scoring a single goal and just having seven assists to show for it; he finished his NHL career with the Florida Panthers, going 1-2-3 in 5 games to finish off the 1995-96 season before settling in the minors and dominating at the AHL and IHL levels. His last two seasons of pro hockey were played in Germany, where he was almost a point-per-game player in his early 30s.