Manny Malhotra Autographed Card

Manny Malhotra hasn't yet announced his retirement from hockey, but after suiting up for 23 games with the AHL's Lake Erie Monsters between December and March on a professional try-out - save for a Team Canada Spengler Cup championship during the Holidays - and not being a part of the team's Calder Cup championship, his chances look slim on suiting up on the ice. Particularly considering he was blanked at the Spengler Cup and had just 4 goals, 2 assists and 6 points in those 23 games with the Monsters, finishing with a -7 rating.

However, the Monsters' head coach Jared Bednar now holds the same position with the Colorado Avalanche, so perhaps a move behind the bench - or at least as a face-off consultant - is in the cards for Malhotra. There are even rumblings of such developments being also possible with the Vancouver Canucks, in the city where Manny and his wife Joann Nash - sister of Canadian basketball legend Steve Nash - have established themselves.

A good friend of mine received a superb birthday present yesterday: a Montréal Canadiens jersey signed by many of the players from the 2014-15 edition, including Tomas Plekanec, Andrei Markov, Carey Price, Max Pacioretty, Brendan Gallagher, P.K. Subban, David Desharnais, Alex Galchenyuk, Sergei Gonchar, Lars Eller, Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau, Dustin Tokarski, Jiri Sekac, Brandon Prust, Tom Gilbert, Nathan Beaulieu, Jacob De La Rose, and - you guessed it! - Malhotra; that gave me the idea to go looking for this card of him with the Columbus Blue Jackets, which he signed in blue sharpie while with the Habs:

It's card #25 from Upper Deck's 2007-08 Series 1 set, one with an extremely stripped down design. Then again, the Jackets' dark blue (away) uniforms very pretty plain themselves...

Manny Malhotra Autograph Card

In my continuing analysis of who lost the Trade Deadline, I bring you today's candidate, Manny Malhotra. When I last featured him, he had just suffered an eye injury whilst with the Vancouver Canucks, who subsequently shut him down and refused to let him play with the team again.

His spectacular comeback last season, first with the AHL's Charlotte Checkers then the Carolina Hurricanes was impressive, and over the summer he came to the Montréal Canadiens specifically to help win faceoffs (league leader, so, check), and kill penalties (check), thus freeing Tomas Plekanec for more offensive-zone minutes (well, Plek's chemistry with Max Pacioretty on the PK making them perhaps more dangerous short a man than at even strength still gave both pillars of the Habs' offense a lot of time when a man down).

But as the great philosopher Meat Loaf put it, ''two out of three ain't bad''.

However, when the Canadiens acquired hometown grinder Torrey Mitchell from the Buffalo Sabres, it was Malhotra who lost his spot, he of the one goal and four points in 57 games stat line. I mean, I get it, it makes sense, but it's cruel, considering Malhotra had done what had been asked of him, he just couldn't add to that with any secondary scoring to speak of, some of it due to bad puck luck, none of it due to lack of effort.

He had started his career with the New York Rangers, who had made him the seventh-overall pick in 1998, and when playing at home, this is what he looked like:

It's the gold variant version of insert card #241 from In The Game's 1998-99 Be A Player set, featuring an on-card autograph signed in black sharpie.

Manny Malhotra Autographed Picture

Where do I start with this one?

I always liked Manny Malhotra. From the time he was a kid, he was compared to Jarome Iginla all the time: consummate leader, a knack for scoring, unstoppable.

In Juniors, he captained the Guelph Storm to the Memorial Cup, was named to the tournament's All Star team and awarded the most sportsmanlike player of the tournament. That year, he was also named the OHL's scholastic player of the year en route to being drafted in the first round by the New York Rangers. He also captained Team Canada twice: once at the 3 Nations Cup (now the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament) with the undefeated (6-0) under-18 team, and once at the World Juniors in 2000, winning the bronze medal.

But it never worked out with the Rangers, who at first had and then were looking for an immediate solution to the retirement of Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky at center and didn't have time to groom a kid into the role. But four years spent with their AHL affiliate Hartford Wolf Pack (including a Calder Cup win) had made him into an amazing defensive forward.

So the Dallas Stars acquired him because they wanted an Iginla-like player. But one goal in 16 games to finish the 2001-02 season, 10 points in 59 games the following year and no points in 9 games to start the 2003-04 campaign saw him put on waivers and subsequently claimed by the Columbus Blue Jackets, with whom he would improve his points totals for four straight years, often in match-ups against the opposing team's best lines.

Then came a successful season with the San Jose Sharks (19 goals, plus-17 rating, ice time on the powerplay, a relatively long playoff run considering, you know, the Sharks), before he was signed to a three-year contract on July 1st, 2010 by the Vancouver Canucks, who are looking for a Cup run themselves.

With the Canucks in first place, Malhotra was second in the NHL in faceoff percentage with an astonishing 61.8% and was a major reason for the team being the second-ranked in the league for penalty-killing when he was struck in the eye by an errant puck on March 16th. He has undergone surgery and will miss the rest of the season; while the team remains mute on the subject, it is widely believed he will require at least one more surgery before it is known whether he will recover his eyesight.

Ironically, a friend of mine who lives in Vancouver sent me this autographed picture, postmarked March 14th, two days before the accident. I got it yesterday. While I welcome the gift, my thoughts are more with Malhotra, hoping he'll make a full recovery.