Wild Preview: Mikko Koivu Jersey Card

This will likely be the preface to all of this year's Season Preview posts: 2020 is a different beast and requires adaptability; in my case, it means the joint posts with my "main/personal" blog will not be in the "player here/analysis there" format but rather the entire scope of the analysis will take place here and the player will have some sort of direct connection to what's written. Caveats: at this point, despite the season being set to start in Mid-January, several impact players haven't found a team yet and quite a few teams are currently above the salary cap, which means there is much maneuvering left to do.

GM Bill Guerin is reshaping the Minnesota Wild (player links go to other posts on my blog, team links are sponsored by Amazon): gone are Eric Staal, Alex Galchenyuk, Jason Zucker, Devan Dubnyk, Luke Kenin, Ryan Donato and even long-time captain Mikko Koivu, in are Cam Talbot, Marcus Johansson, Nick Bonino, Nick Bjugstad, and Dakota Mermis... so far.

What makes their odds look good:
Talbot isn't a bad goalie, he had a Vezina-worthy season in 2016-17 - far enough to doubt, close enough for Wild fans to believe. Kevin Fiala, Mats Zuccarello, Jared Spurgeon and Matt Dumba are top-unit players, Zach Parise and Ryan Suter still play top-unit minutes, Marco Rossi and Matthew Boldy look like solid prospects and Kirill Kaprizov actually has a fair shot at a Calder Trophy with what he accomplished last season in the KHL (first in goals, third in points, All-Star at age 22, one of a handful of point-per-game players in the entire league).

Question marks:
Other teams have used Johansson as a middle-six forward, the Wild may not have that luxury, and it remains to be seen if he can produce at top-line level. Does Suter start breaking down now taht he's in his mid-30s? Will Parise get injured again? How many young guys steal jobs from veterans with their play?

Outlook:
Minnesota is clearly in a rebuild; Guerin wants veterans he knows and trusts to not disrupt the process and perhaps help win a few games here and there, but this roster is the middle-point in a huge turnover, and it's unclear who will be there three years from now save for Rossi and Boldy. Still, in a top-heavy and shallow West Division, the Wild have a legitimate shot at a playoff spot; they'll battle for fourth place with the Arizona Coyotes.

Prediction:
Fifth in the West Division, a point or two behind Arizona.

There was a loud minority clamoring for Koivu's departure online these past few years, but I've never seen it reflected in the larger realm of Wild fans. Instead, most praised his effort level and two-way (although more and more on the defensive side as the years went on) play and saw him as a fine captain, just perhaps overpaid in the twilight of his career. Because it seems too commonplace in today's NHL, I wasn't exactly shocked when Guerin announced #9 would not even be re-signed as a fourth-line center, but found it sad that a player of his stature who had played his entire career with the team and been the first player in franchise history to hit the 1000 mark (and scoring the shootout winner in the milestone game) would not be allowed to retire in green and red. Here he is wearing the team's original white (home) uniform on card #HM-MK from Fleer's 2007-08 Hot Prospects set and Hot Materials subset, manufactured by Upper Deck:

It features a nice, dark green ame-worn jersey swatch.

I believe he will get along fine with John Tortorella and the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Alexander Radulov Jersey card

Coming off a terrific comeback season with the Montréal Canadiens, Alexander Radulov will go from a team that has Jordie Benn in its top-six on defense to the team that got rid of him as their seventh guy but is captained by his brother (Jamie Benn), the Dallas Stars. Indeed, the former Nashville Predators first-round draft pick (15th overall, 2004) has just signed this summer's most lucrative free agent deal, a five-year, $31.5M deal that carries a $6.25M cap hit.

It's a mixed summer for Habs GM Marc Bergevin, as he signed the Washington Capitals' best defensive defenseman (in my opinion, the best of the second-tier guys who do what he does, behind the top-four of Marc-Édouard Vlasic, Marc Methot, Ryan Ellis and Mattias Ekholm), but lost his team's best forward last season in Radulov, is playing hardball with one of the organization's best defensemen of all time in Andrei Markov, and looks primed to sign goalie Carey Price to the team's highest-paying contract of all time, likely top in the league by over two million per season (edit: actually by $3M, and since most of the money is in the form of signing bonuses, cannot reasonably be bought out to minimize the cap hit, as signing bonuses are guaranteed money), which will handicap the team's chances of building a contender for eight years. It's like he's hockey's Donald Trump, doing his best to get fired.

Oh, and he followed the league-wide trend of signing veterans to $1M/one-year contracts, but instead of opting for, say,  Michael Cammalleri (Los Angeles Kings), Patrick Sharp (Chicago Blackhawks), Scott Hartnell (Predators), Nail Yakupov (Colorado Avalanche), David Desharnais (New York Rangers), Dominic Moore (Toronto Maple Leafs), Kyle Quincey (Minnesota Wild), Jussi Jokinen (Edmonton Oilers), Brandon Bollig (San Jose Sharks), or Benoît Pouliot (Buffalo Sabres), he went for injury magnet Ales Hemsky.

The Stars' Jim Nill, however, is looking to build a contender, after missing the playoffs entirely due to shaky goaltending following a first-place finish in the Central Division. Antti Niemi was bought out, Ben Bishop was brought in via trade-and-sign, and Kari Lehtonen will back him up for one season. The aforementioned Methot was acquired in a trade with the Vegas Golden Knights, and the team still boasts Tyler Seguin, Benn and Jason Spezza on offense, in addition to signing Martin Hanzal, who could be Nill's mistake of the summer, as he's shown with the Minnesota Wild last season to be slow and unable to make those playing with him better.

Because of that, I envision the Benn/Seguin first-line pairing to remain intact, I expect Spezza to hit 50-60 points playing with guys who can finish his plays a small portion of the time (Antoine Roussel and Mattias Janmark) and Radulov to take Hanzal on his back and get him to some 40-50 points, which should also get casual fans thinking "Radu" is having a disappointing season while Hanzal's producing at his expected rate, when in fact the Toothless Russian will have carried him all season long. Case in point: Phillip Danault, who I like a lot, but whom Radulov got to the 40-poin mark despite his having never even reached that production level in the Chicago Blackhawks' AHL system and had obtained a grand total of 10 NHL points in his previous 53 NHL games spread over two seasons. Hey, this type of situation made Phil Kessel turn Nick Bonino into a "prized free agent" and two-time Stanley Cup winner...

As a reminder, Radulov is not only one of the hockey players that is most difficult to knock off the puck and an adept playmaker and scorer, but also a two-time World Championship gold medalist with Team Russia (2008 and 2009), a Gagarin Cup winner with Ufa Salavat Yulaev (2011) and Memorial Cup champion with the Québec Remparts (2006), as well as the KHL's second all-time leading scorer behind Sergei Mozyakin.

Here he is wearing the Preds' former home uniform, on card #HM-AR from Fleer's 2007-08 Hot Prospects by Upper Deck:

It features a matching white game-worn jersey swatch.

Pascal Leclaire Jersey Card

If you want to make these current NHL playoffs player-centric, we could go with Pascal Leclaire and how the team that drafted him - the Columbus Blue Jackets - is now eliminated and the team that traded for him - the Ottawa Senators - is still in the running, as the highest seed in the Atlantic Division no less. And neither team existed when I was growing up in the 1980s, if I want to make this Seb-centric.

It's so hard to fathom that Leclaire's been retired since the end of the 2010-11 season and that he's still just 34 years old. Those hip injuries not only took a toll on his body, they ruined the best years of his life.

Sure, he never achieved what an 8th overall pick (2001) is expected to, but no one can take away his two silver medals (2002 World Juniors and 2008 World Championships) with Team Canada, both times falling to Russia.

He played with the Jackets more, so it's fitting that this card shows him wearing their blue (home) uniform:

That's card #HM-PL from Upper Deck's 2007-08 Fleer Hot Prospects set and Hot Materials sub-set, with a matching blue game-worn jersey swatch.

I used to love his TPS pad designs, which you can see a bit of on the card but even better below:

They just seem to be perfect at redirecting pucks to the corner, one of the moves I always try to teach young kids first.

Jordan Sigalet Jersey Card

In a post about Andrew Raycroft last week, I mentioned the unevenness of the Boston Bruins' goaltending position since the departures of Andy Moog and Réjean Lemelin in the early 1990s, mentioning they had really good ones that did pan out, some that should have but didn't, and kids they'd burnt out before they got started. I omitted one because I knew he would be the next one up: Jordan Sigalet, whom the Bs drafted out of high school, 209th overall (in the 7th round) in 2001, and who would be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a couple of years later, when playing in the NCAA for the Bowling Green (State University) Falcons.

He played with the disease kept secret for a year and a half, but upon going public with it, he garnered widespread support from adversaries and teammates alike; other schools' teams sent signed jerseys, and he was the first goaltender to be named captain at Bowling Green.

He played with the AHL's Providence Bruins for three seasons, posting a .905 save percentage and 2.49 GAA in 81 games - 46 of them wins - earning a call-up with Boston, who had him on the ice for the last minute of a 6-3 win in 2005-06.

It may have been his only NHL appearance, but after having been told he'd have to retire altogether in the near future, it was more than a kid's dream come true, it was beating impossible odds. Josh Harding knows what that's like, now, but Sigalet had no role models to speak of when he was coming up - all he had was his NHL-caliber technique, a decent glove hand, and the strength to battle through anything that would come his way.

After his playing career ended with a stint in Austria with the Vienna Capitals, Sigalet became the goaltending coach of the WHL's Everett Silvertips for two years, then for the AHL's Abbotsford Heat, and after Clint Malarchuk's departure, now holds that position with the Calgary Flames, where he can count on the support of assistant coach Jacques Cloutier, who also held the position back with the Colorado Avalanche's Stanley Cup-winning days.

I don't know if he ever knew he'd make it back to the Big Show, but he has. And the Flames' goalies are playing remarkably well this season.

Here is card #HM-SI from Fleer's 2005-06 Hot Prospects set, from the Hot Materials sub-set, manufactured by Upper Deck, featuring a black swatch from a jersey worn in a photoshoot:

Upper Deck loves to hype their inserts with lines like ''we hope you're happy to hold this part of hockey history in your hands'' and such, but in this case, that's really as close as it gets to having been a part of Sigalet's NHL career.

Patrick Thoresen Jersey Card

Patrick Thoresen is a 30-year old, 6-foot tall and 200-pound power forward who can hit, excels at two-way play and has been a point-per-game producer in every professional league, except one. Unfortunately for him, that one exception is the NHL, but he reportedly wants back in, after having been successful everywhere else. Even in the Olympics (5 assists in 4 games with Team Norway in 2010) and World Championships, particularly in 2012, where his 18 points in just 8 games made him the first Norwegian ever to be named on the tournament's All-Star Team.

And he's won the Gagarin Cup in the KHL, and was the league's second-best point-getter, after dominating in Switzerland.

I think he hasn't stuck around with either the Edmonton Oilers or Philadelphia Flyers because he was a victim of his qualities: being so good defensively, he was put in roles where he was in no position to contribute offensively - playing with guys who can't finish nor set up, starting shifts in his own zone against the other team's top forwards, and so forth.

Thoresen's not an A+ at anything, but he's a definite B/B+ at everything. His case has been championed by one particular blogger, in 2012, 2011 and 2010.

He was the first undrafted Norwegian player to suit up in an NHL game, with the Oilers, which is where this card comes in:

It's from Fleer's 2006-07 Hot Prospects set by Upper Deck, and is card #HM-PA of the Hot Materials sub-set, featuring a blue event-worn jersey swatch, while the card shows him with the Oilers' turn-of-the-millenium white (home) uniform, with the ''driller'' shoulder patches.

I would give him a shot in my top-9 any time.

Andrew Alberts: 3 Jersey Cards

Andrew Alberts was in the news this week, for having been sucker-punched by the Philadelphia Flyers' Jody Shelley, resulting in Shelley being suspended for the NHL-habitual two games. It marks the second time Alberts misses a long period after being injured by a Flyer, as he was limited to 35 games in 2007-08 after a nasty hit by Scott Hartnell, who received... a two-game suspension.

Ironically enough, Alberts played for the Flyers in 2008-09 and had his career-best season patrolling their blue line, with 13 points; he also accumulated 61 penalty minutes that season, his second-highest career total, behind his 2006-07 campaign of 124 penalty minutes while playing for the Boston Bruins.

He has also twice represented Team USA at the World Championships, both times playing in 7 games, both times accumulating 1 point and 14 penalty minutes, for a record of 1-1-2 and 28 PIMs in 14 international games.

All 3 of these cards are from photo shoots and were manufactured by Upper Deck for the 2005-06 season; what I like the most about them is that between them, I have all three colours of the Bruins' jersey: black, yellow, and white/yellow. The card on top is from the 2005-06 Hot Prospects set, Hot Materials sub-set, and is card #HM-AA, licensed for use by Fleer. The card in the middle is from the 2005-06 Upper Deck Series 2 set, the Rookie Threads insert set (card #RT-AA); there is an autograph variant, but I have never seen it. Finally, the card on the bottom is from the 2005-06 Fleer Ultra set, the Rookie Uniformity sub-set, and is card #RU-AA.

Maxim Lapierre Hot Materials Jersey Card

In the first game of the Montréal Canadiens / Washington Capitals game, the Caps were dominating in the first period, shooting 19 times on Jaroslav Halak, so when coach Jacques Martin needed to turn the tide around, he sent Maxim Lapierre's line out to do some damage - and they did just that.

Within seconds, the Caps were stuck in their own end, unable to withstand the pressure and in need of catching-glove heroics by José Théodore to keep the game close.

Needless to say, not only am I hoping for more of the same tonight, I hope Martin doesn't release the gritty speedster for less than a minute in the first period like he did two nights ago.

This 2005-06 Hot Prospects card (#HM-ML of the Hot Materials insert sub-set) by Fleer (or, technically, by Upper Deck) incorporates a pretty big swatch off the Habs' red (now home, then away) jersey and was taken from a photo shoot. Here's what Fleer had to say about it on the back of the card:

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have received a Maxim  Lapierre Jersey trading card from Fleer LLC. On the front of this card is an authentic piece of a jersey worn by Maxim Lapierre in a photo shoot. We hope you enjoy this piece of hockey history as we at Fleer continue to keep you as close as you can get!

Yes, you read correctly: hockey history. Feels good, doesn't it?