Mika Zibanejad Autographed Card

The trade that sent Derick Brassard from the New York Rangers to the Ottawa Senators yesterday also took Mika Zibanejad by surprise; the Swede was comfortable playing on the Sens alongside countryman Erik Karlsson and with former team captain Daniel Alfredsson now in the team's administrative staff.

He'd been trending upwards and improving ever since he came to the NHL and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future, likely garnering him a huge raise from his current $3.25M salary:

A 30-goal and/or 70-point season is not out of the question for the now-23-year-old in the next few years - perhaps even for the next few years. He's also likely to be a staple of Team Sweden, with whom he already has gold (2012 World Juniors), silver (2011 World U-18 Championships) and bronze (2010 World U-17 World Championships) medals.

Here he is sporting Stockholm's famous Djurgårdens IF Hockey team's away uniform, on card #9 from In The Game's 2011-12 Heroes And Prospects set and International sub-set:

He signed it in blue sharpie two seasons ago after a game against the Montréal Canadiens.

Alexandre Daigle Autograph Card

When word got out this weekend that Nail Yakupov had requested a trade from the Edmonton Oilers, I found it hard to believe, considering he was doing well with Connor McDavid earlier this year and had found his game last year alongside Derek Roy as well; it turns out the main reason would be his relegation to third line duties and lack of decent playing time, so we'll see how that develops.

But the comments section on many websites were getting rather mean, going to great lengths to insult him; one such comment was that he was "the biggest choke job since Alexandre Daigle", which I thought was disingenuous for more than one reason, attacking two players who did not deserve it.

Let's compare a bit, shall we?

First off, let's go on "pure stats":

Daigle: 129 goals, 198 assists and 327 points in 616 games. Got a fair amount of Lady Byng votes in 2003-04. Not numbers that scream "First Overall Pick", and not close to the second pick of the 1993 draft, Hall Of Famer Chris Pronger, but still a player I'd choose ahead of the third pick, Chris Gratton. Thus, NHL material, for sure. Add to that 166 points in 164 Swiss League games and 71 points in 72 AHL games, and the fact that his entire NHL career took place in the Dead Puck Era (1994-2004) and you've got a case that he isn't the worst pick one could make, though he's not a game changer per se.

Yakupov, so far: 48 goals, 59 assists and 107 points in 248 games. He's barely 22. He was chosen ahead of the likes of Ryan Murray (2nd), Alex Galchenyuk (3rd), Morgan Rielly (5th), Hampus Lindholm (6th), Mathew Dumba (7th), Jacob Trouba (9th), Slater Koekkoek (10th), Mikhail Grigorenko (12th), Cody Ceci (15th), Teuvo Teravainen (18th), Olli Maata (22nd), Mike Matheson (23rd), Malcolm Subban (24th), Colton Sissons (50th), Dalton Thrower (51st), Joonas Korpisalo (62nd), Shayne Gostisbehere (78th) and Matt Murray (83rd).

And, no offense to all of these guys who have already achieved more in hockey than I ever did, but I don't see any of them knocking on the Hall Of Fame's doors, save perhaps for Murray if he keeps improving and dominating at every level.

So Yakupov was part of a weak draft, which means his being the #1 pick isn't entirely his fault to begin with.

In terms of first-overall busts, one might be more inclined to look at Patrik Stefan, however, the first pick in 1999, whose career stats in the NHL read: 64 goals, 124 assists and 188 points in 455 games, numbers that Yakupov could surpass in two decent years or three average-to-mediocre ones.

And just to dig further in, here are five others from the Class of 1999: Daniel Sedin (2nd), Henrik Sedin (3rd), Martin Havlat (26th), Mike Comrie (91st), and Henrik Zetterberg (210th). That's three Hall Of Famers and two All-Stars. Those are mistakes a GM pays for dearly. In this case, Don Wadell was given the chance to mess the franchise up again, enough to only make the playoffs once in its entire history, but also to get pretty much nothing in return for Marian Hossa to ensure they never make the post-season ever again. He now works in the upper echelons of the Carolina Hurricanes' parent company, so he'll have a chance to move a second team to Canada in a matter of weeks (or months).

But back to Daigle, whose trade value went from Pat Falloon and Vaclav Prospal to Andrei Kovalenko to Alexander Selivanov to cash. He became a decent two-way player under Jacques Lemaire with the Minnesota Wild, even leading the team in scoring with 51 points (20 goals and 31 assists) in 2003-04.

He has suited up for Team Canada three times: twice at the World Juniors (1993 and 1995, with 16 total points in 14 games, winning gold both times) as well as the 2009 Spengler Cup (2 goals on a team that was ousted by the champs Minsk Dinamo in the semifinal), an event he'd played in previously three times with HC Davos, with whom he also won three Swiss league championships.

Here he is wearing his country's white ("home") uniform from the 1995 World Juniors, from Upper Deck's 1995-96 Be A Player set (and World Class sub-set):

It's card #S188, the signed insert version of card #188, which he autographed on-card in black sharpie.

Alexei Kovalev Autograph Card

In a repeat performance, Team Russia will face Team USA in the World Championship semifinal in Prague on Saturday after beating Sweden, which was arguably missing the best goalie in the world (Henrik Lundqvist, whose New York Rangers are still in the NHL playoffs).

It is believed the Russians will have Alex Ovechkin for the game, which will be a boost, and reminds me of when another Russian Alex was viewed as All-World and could have a tremendous impact on games, Alex Kovalev.

Easily the best forward to play for the Montréal Canadiens in the past 25 years whenever he decided to ''turn it on'', ''Kovy'' was named the All-Star Game MVP in front of the home crowd at the Bell Centre as he dominated a game that featured Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Carey Price and the rest of the league's star players.

As I wrote nearly a year ago:

Did he have a tendency to take two or three nights off per week? Short answer: yes. In fact, though, the more honest answer would be this: never in important games, never in the playoffs, never when sporting a letter (be it the captain's 'C' or the alternate's 'A') on his chest, and never in front of an adoring hometown crowd cheering him on. And never when he could take center stage.

If there was a spotlight, he wanted it shined on him, no matter who else was there. The only time it didn't happen was during his rookie season, on a Stanley Cup-winning Rangers team, where Mark Messier stole the show; any other time, even playing alongside Mario Lemieux or Jaromir Jagr, Kovalev looked like the best player on the ice... (exactly) half the time.

Here he is deking and going through a Finnish goalie to score a goal while playing for the Soviet Union (notice the CCCP letters on his jersey, which no longer existed when the card set, Upper Deck's 1995-96 Be A Player collection, from which this is card #S182 - the S stands for ''signed insert version'' - featuring an on-card thin black-sharpied autograph, was released):

The card is part of the set's World Class sub-set, where they could use a player's picture while suiting up for his national team.

Athena Lundberg: Two Autographed Cards

In 2010 and 2011, I got over a bad breakup and losing my day job by writing and touring. My travels took me to North American places I hadn't been to in over a decade, including where the sun shines all year.

I met Silicon Valley native (though not silicone-enhanced) Athena Lundberg either in Nevada or California, and she proved to be charming, witty, kind-hearted and a lover of animals.

We also share a love of big-time celebrations: while I usually host UnPop Montréal - a 10-to-30-day festival of free music shows with 3 or 4 acts per night in my hometown for everyone to come and enjoy in various bars and lofts, around my birthday - she holds parties in Hollywood where she basically is the queen and surrounds herself with her friends and loyal subjects, as can be seen in these ads:

Then again, you can do whatever the hell you want when you've been a Playboy Playmate (January 2006). She'll turn 30 in a year and a half, I can only imagine the scope it'll have then.

She turned brunette recently, and while I'm not the biggest fan of blondes, I must say that these Benchwarmer cards she signed in blue sharpie for me do not do her justice, as she looked a lot better and ''realer'' in person than here. First, her ''Rookie Card'', from the 2009 Limited set (card #10):

And a card celebrating her ''Norwegian roots'' (though there is nothing about her that doesn't scream ''California''!), from the 2009 International set (and #I81 of the High Numbers sub-set):

For those who are curious, she does, indeed, have a back tattoo:

She's been a Benchwarmer staple since 2009 and has many limited-edition cards in most sets nowadays. Now that her dream of appearing in Playboy has been fulfilled, she will no longer pose nude.

Mike Modano Jersey Card

Definitely one of the best American players of all time, Mike Modano retired at the beginning of the season when no team would offer him a contract. He spent all except one season as a member of the Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars franchise, with his lone season with another organization coming last year, his hometown Detroit Red Wings.

A staple of international competition, Modano played for Team USA 11 different times (which makes guessing which edition this jersey emanates from a useless endeavour), winning the silver medal at the 2002 Olympics as well as the 1991 Canada Cup, and gold at the inaugural 1996 World Cup (the Canada Cup's replacement). All this in addition to 2 Stanley Cup finals (one Cup, with Dallas, in 1999), an All-Rookie Team nod in 1990, and 8 All Star games.

This card is from In The Game's 2011-12 Canada Vs. The World set, the World Junior Grads insert sub-set (card #WJG-25). It is the Silver Version, but as with the Ryan Miller card, I have no idea how many were made.

Ryan Miller Jersey Card

Ryan Miller has probably been the best goalie in the world for the past 2 years, with a Vezina trophy and a silver medal at the Olympics to show for it. And he's from the famous Michigan Miller family, which has already produced 5 NHLers.

Sure, this season hasn't exactly started off on the right track - he was even yanked last night after surrendering 5 goals on 15 shots in just less than 30 minutes - but you can count on him to bounce back in a major way. And, as long as the Buffalo Sabres make the playoffs, with the team they have, they can beat any team there.

This card is from In The Game's 2011-12 Canada Vs The World set, the Global Greats jersey sub-set (card #GG-19), featuring a dark blue swatch of Miller's former AHL team, the Rochester Americans. And, yes, I find it weird that they took an AHL jersey rather than a Team USA one, but it's a nice big swatch, so that's that. Also, I'm aware that it being a 'Silver Version' means something about the number of cards produced, but I have no idea what it is and the product's webpage doesn't say.

Ted Drury Autograph Card

With the sad news of Chris Drury retiring, I thought I'd talk about this signed insert card of his older brother, former NHLer Ted Drury, from Classic's 1994-95 Classic set, which never made the Beckett price guide because it wasn't licensed by the NHL nor the NHLPA - and perhaps also because they were cheaply made and as thin as cardboard can get before it's simply called ''paper''.

It is numbered 827/1920, which Classic still dares to say is a ''limited edition''. Yes, this signed version is ''limited'' to less than 2000 - bravo. How many of the original card did you print? And why does the whole back have to be the proof/guarantee, why can't the autographed version also have Drury's stats or at least a mention of which team he was playing for or drafted by?

In this instance, Drury's wearing Team USA's colours, either from the World Juniors or the National Team, which he was a part of for two seasons. It should be mentioned that before the NHL's players were allowed to play in the Olympic games, most countries (a notable exception was the USSR, who sent a combination of the Moscow Central Red Army team and other star players) had a year-long National Team program where players practiced year-long and played friendly games against low-level professional games to get ready for the next Games.

Drury played for those teams while he attended Harvard University, where he played 3 seasons after being drafted by the Calgary Flames in 1989. He only spent half the 1993-94 season with the Flames, as he was traded to the Hartford Whalers in mid-season. After spending the 1995-96 season with the Ottawa Senators, he spent just over 3 seasons with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks - his longest tenure with a single team, ever - before bouncing around with 3 more NHL teams, 2 AHL teams and 3 German teams before reiring in 2007.

Despite moving around like a prison escapee on the run, Ted Drury still managed to put up decent checking-line numbers everywhere he went, as can be attested from these statistics:

-  93 points and 367 penalty minutes in 414 NHL games
- 121 points in 74 NCAA games
- 30 points and 33 penalty minutes in 69 AHL games
- 168 points and 384 penalty minutes in 252 DEL games

Jim Carey Autograph Card

It had been a while, but I do have plenty of autograph cards from the worst set of all time, Upper Deck's 1995-96 Be A Player series, of which I have already profiled Petr Nedved, Pierre Turgeon, and Brian 'Mr. October' Savage. This time, what many people have come to dub ''goaltending's one-hit wonder'', Jim Carey.

We all know how he was a rookie with the Washington Capitals and won the Calder and Vezina trophies before getting traded to the Boston Bruins and pretty much falling off the face of the earth, but that's not really how things went down.

Being an American, he played College hockey in the WCHA for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers, with whom he was a WCHA All-Rookie, member of the Second All Star Team, and Rookie Of The Year for the 1992-93 season. He was just as good the next year.

In 1994-95, with the NHL lock-out under way, he went to the AHL to play with with the Portland Pirates. The result? Rookie Of The Year, First All Star Team, and Goalie Of The Year, despite the Capitals calling him up to finish the season in the NHL, where he dominated the opposition, going 18-6-3, which pretty much ensured he'd be the Caps' starter the following year, where he was Rookie Of The Year, Goalie Of The year, and a member of the First All Star Team. Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, the team under-performed in 1996-97, and despite his decent individual statistics (2.75 GAA), he lost more than he won (17-18-3) and was sent packing to Boston, as the Bruins thought they could reboot the Massachussets native's career, but Pat Burns elected to go with Byron Dafoe instead. Carey was sent to the Providence Bruins

, in the AHL, and made enough of an impression for the St. Louis Blues to pick him off waivers; unfortunately, a serious inner-ear concussion playing with their AHL affiliate ended his career.

As of now, Carey is the CEO and President of OptiMED Billing Solutions, a medical billing company in Sarasota, Florida. There is an even more complete blog entry on his career here.

This BAP card (# s189) depicts him wearing Team USA's uniform with the ''World Class'' mention, as he was slated to be Mike Richter's backup in the 1996 World Cup. He is sporting a Shark-like mask, holding a Titan stick high, and his trademark Brian's equipment - all reasons to like him at least a bit (I had a similar setup myself).

Sergei Zholtok Autographed Card

Keeping with this Olympic spirit...

One player who would be in this year's Olympics if he could is Sergei Zholtok (Latvian: Sergejs Žoltoks, Russian: Сергей Жолток), manning the Latvian wing despite his 37 years of age, but a heart condition and sub-par medical facilities in professional hockey rinks of the former-U.S.S.R. have ensured he is no longer among us.

Unlike many NHLers, Zholtok didn't develop an interest in hockey until he was 8 years old, watching a Canada-U.S.S.R. game from the 1980 Olympics on TV, but as soon as he saw it, he wanted to take part in it. He and his grandfather begged the local club to let him practice and learn to skate with them until he was eventually good enough to actually make the team.

By 1989, he was already a member of the Soviet Union team that captured the silver medal at the European Junior Championships, gathering 6 goals and 10 points in six games. A year later, it was silver at the World Juniors, and in 1992, World Junior gold.

He had made enough of an impression with the Boston Bruins to become their third-round pick (55th overall) at the 1992 NHL draft (a draft that yielded 15 All Star players including Nikolai Khabibulin, Sergei Gonchar, Roman Hamrlik and Valeri Bure, as well as fellow third-rounders Brent Gretzky, Manny Fernandez, Kirk Maltby, Craig Rivet and German star Stefan Ustorf). However, he didn't make a good enough impression to last with the Bruins, who only let him play 25 games in three seasons in the NHL, spending the rest of his time with their AHL affiliate in Providence.

Zholtok needed a change of scenery, and he got it with the IHL's Las Vegas Thunder. In his first season there, 1995-96, he amassed 51 goals and 101 points in 80 games (plus 20 another points in 15 playoff games), and he started the 1996-97 campaign scoring 13 goals (and 27 points) in a mere 19 games before the Ottawa Senators called on him to finish the season with them, where his 28 points in 57 games propelled them to their first-ever playoff appearance. The following season, despite his statistics dropping somewhat, the team still managed to make it to the second round.

1998-99 saw him traded to the Montréal Canadiens, where again his statistics would decline (on a terrible team) with only 7 goals in 70 games and a short stint in the AHL with the Fredericton Canadiens, but by the time the season ended, he took part in his third World Championships for Latvia. It must have instilled some confidence in him, because the next season, he scored a team-high 26 goals for the Habs that heightened both the fans' and management's expectations of him. His lone goal in the 2000-01 season's first 32 games, however, were more than disappointing, so the Canadiens sent him to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for Chad Kilger, who had a tremendous stretch of success upon arriving in Montréal, while Zholtok put up 20 points in 37 games to lead the Oilers to the playoffs.

His play with the Oilers had caught the eye of Minnesota Wild management, and they called upon him to lead them in their sophomore season in the NHL, and he came up with 39 points in 73 games. The next year, the team made the playoffs and went on a surprise run to the Western Conference Finals, as he followed a 42-point regular season (78 games) with a strong showing in the playoffs - 13 points in 18 games. He was even named team captain in January 2003.

In 2003-04, in what was his final NHL season, he was traded by the Wild to the Nashville Predators as they, themselves, were making their playoff push, which they managed despite Zholtok barely collecting a goal and an assist in 11 regular season games, and a mere goal in 6 playoff games.

During the lock-out 2004-05 season, he elected to go back home to Riga, Latvia to play with former Wild teammate (and good friend) Darby Hendrickson for HK Riga 2000 in the BHL, the team that is currently the KHL's Dinamo Riga farm club. He had 7 points and was playing in his sixth game when, with 5 minutes remaining in a game against HC Dinamo Minsk, he left the ice to head to the dressing room, feeling ill. As he collapsed, Hendrickson ran down the hall to help him; by the time medics arrived, he had already passed away, his friend by his side. They listed the cause of death as being heart failure.

His NHL career might have been uneven, but his international career, however, is laden with success; the medals playing for the Soviet team, and the 6 times playing with Latvia at the Worlds, including many surprising showings and quite a few unexpected wins as everyone's favourite underdog country can surely attest to that.

This card (#659) is from the 1991-92 Upper Deck High Number Series set, back in the day when Upper Deck made only one hockey set, split in two: the ''regular numbers'' in time for the start of the season, and the ''high numbers'', updated with players who had been traded, rookies, or, at times, international players on their way to the NHL, at mid-season, near the All Star break.

I actually prefer these old Upper Deck sets to the newer ones; sure, the first three sets had basically the same simple, white-border design, but there was a big, clear picture at the back that added class, in addition that Upper Deck usually tried to have both team jerseys (home and away) appear on the card - in this case, the front is the red ''away'' CCCP jersey, while the back sees Zholtok sport the white ''home'' one.

Notice how Zholtok even signed the back of the card? I found that awesome. The card was signed in black ball-point pen - no one had a sharpie at hand - while he was a member of the Wild; it was less than an hour after a game, I was with a friend who was wearing a Zholtok Habs jersey, and even though he was rushed by Wild staff to get on the team bus, he took a bit of time to talk to us about Montréal, its fans, its restaurants, and life in general. A class act, really.

Saku Koivu Autographed Card

Saku Koivu, the Montréal Canadiens' 10-year captain, as beloved for his intensity and constant effort as he was hated for not speaking French and having captained the worst decade in team history...

Here's a card from before those days, when he was just a top prospect, a local hero, having just scored 43 points in 47 games in Finland's professional league - for Classic's 1994-95 Hockey series.

Classic didn't have the rights to display NHL or NHLPA players, so instead they published cards from the minor leagues, the juniors, and international teams. It was a cheap way to get rookie cards before anyone else, but the market never really recognized the brand as being serious.

This autograph was taken by someone trustworthy at the Habs' pre-season jamboree in the mid-2000s.