Tessa Bonhomme Autographed Card

Tessa Bonhomme and the rest of Team Canada's gold medal-winning team from the 2010 Olympics will be inducted into the Hockey Hall Of Fame at the end of the month. She was a star defender on the national team and the captain of the CHWL's Toronto Furies for the better part of four seasons, which she juggled with Olympic and World Championship schedules as well as full-time jobs on TV since 2011.

Indeed, she first started off as an analyst on Leafs TV, then played in two reality series - appearing in Wipeout Canada in 2010 and winning the 2012 Battle Of The Blades competition with Olympian figure skater David Pelletier. She's been an anchor and reporter for TSN's flagship show, SportsCentre, since September 2014.

Here she is on card #40 from In The Game's 2007-08 O Canada collection and National Women's Team sub-set:

She's shown wearing the team's red (away) uniform, sporting her familiar #25 jersey, which slots her perfectly in my Team Canada Numbers Project. She signed it for me by mail, after I sent her a fan letter care of TSN.

Her medal cupboard is filled to the brink with gold (2005 and 2006 Air Canada Cups, 2007 and 2012 World Championships, 2010 Olympics, and 2010 Four Nations Cup) and silver (2009 Canada Cup, and 2009, 2011 and 2013 World Championships) medals. I wouldn't be surprised if she gets a broadcasting award eventually as well.

Meghan Agosta Autographed Card

In many regards, Meghan Agosta is very representative of "minor professional" Canadian team sports, by which I mean professional-level leagues with little financial means and few teams where high-talent athletes compete for a recognized championship, like the CFL or - in this case - the former CWHL.

She started off decently by winning gold with Team Canada at the 2007 World Championships, posting four points in five games, although those statistics are a tad deceiving: she had two assists against Switzerland and Germany to pad up her stats line, on a team where Hailey Wickenheiser had 14 points, Danielle Goyette had 11 and Sarah Vaillancourt, 6.

Still, she made her mark and climbed her way up the depth chart to the point where she became part of the elite herself, making her mark at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics - on home soil - as her third Olympic hat trick became a record; she kept that level of play up to be named to the Media All-Star Team, as well as the tournament's MVP and Best Forward.

In 2011-12, while with the Montréal Stars, she broke Jayna Hefford's single-season scoring record (69 points) by a wide margin, eventually ending up with 80 points, on the strength of 41 goals and 39 assists... in just 27 games. The Stars were stacked that year, with ten point-per-games players in their ranks. They won the league championship, of course.

Still just 32, the Vancouver policewoman probably has another Olympic run in her, in my opinion, as well as a few seasons of part-time play if the women's leagues can get their house in order and actually find a way to play.

She also enters my Team Canada Numbers Project as the wearer of jersey #2 with card #38 from In The Game's 2007-08 O Canada set and National Women's Team sub-set, showing her wearing Canada's red (away) turn-of-the-millennium uniform:

She signed it in blue sharpie while playing for the Stars, probably in 2013.

To date, she has three Olympic gold medals (2006, 2010 and 2014), one Olympic silver (2018), two World Championship gold medals (2007 and 2012) and six silver WC medals (2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017). An Ontario native, she grew up rooting for the Detroit Red Wings.

Caroline Ouellette: Two Autographed Cards

A few days ago, in the wake of the CWHL's demise, Mike Murphy from SB Nation's The Ice Garden compiled a list of the league's greatest players by position - a.k.a. the First Team All-Stars - and for perhaps the first time ever, I agreed 100% with someone else's list.

In the next few days, I'll feature a few of the outstanding athletes I was fortunate enough to see play in the few years I had season tickets to Montréal Stars / Les Canadiennes games. Today, I'll shine the spotlight (once more) on the player with the most achievements, the Maurice "Rocket" Richard of women's hockey, Caroline Ouellette. Most of the following facts come from Murphy's original post.

The CWHL's career points record holder - with a staggering 315 points in 184 games - is the cream of the crop. Only three skaters managed to post 60-point seasons, and she's the only one with two. She's the only career 125-goal scorer, the only 125-assist skater, and the league's sole 300-point getter. With two MVP titles and four Clarkson Cups (2009, 2011, 2012 and 2017), she collected both personal and team accolades in her nine-year career.

How incredible was her production? Her 184 assists alone would make her the league's fourth-best in career points. Even better: in an era where players come up younger and younger each year, where pundits start talking about "wrong side of 30" to speak of declining production, Ouellette mutes those voices all by her lonesome, considering she joined the league at age 29, technically past what would nowadays be considered her "prime" (though I tend to disagree with tha notion, because while point production is usually highest between the ages of 23 and 26, overall play and impact is best served from 25 to 32, in both the men's game and women's).

I always like to point out the fact that she is one of the rare players who got to play meaningful, in-season games in an arena bearing her name, a tribute usually given to retired or deceased athletes.

Then again, few team sports athletes get to win four Olympic old medals, six World Championship gold and six more WC silver medals to go with her league championships.

For all those reeasons, she was always one of my favourite hockey players.

Here are a couple of signed cards where she's wearing a pink Team Canada uniform from the 2007 World Championships in Winnipeg, paying tribute to the first Worlds just over 25 years earlier (1990, Ottawa):

That's card #23 from In The Game's 2007-08 O Canada set and National Women's Team subset, which she signed in blue sharpie. I'm open to trading one of them, but I'm not adamant about it either. She will be in the Hall Of Fame someday.

Charline Labonté: Two Autographed Cards

As mentioned yesterday, Les Canadiennes de Montréal won the Clarkson Cup last night in Ottawa against the previous season's champion Calgary Inferno. The game was meaningful for many reasons, chief among which asserting Marie-Philip Poulin's clutchness once more, giving returning legend Caroline Ouellette one more title and proving Les Canadiennes are still the dominating team of the league's first era.

Oh, and it enabled long-time goalie Charline Labonté to finally get her hands on the Cup to complete her Triple Gold Club hat trick (Olympic gold, World Championship gold, league championship), becoming just the third (female) goalie to accomplish the feat.

Her medal count is actually pretty amazing: three-time Olympic gold medalist (2006, 2010 and 2014), two-time gold medalist at the Worlds (2007 and 2012) and six-time World Championship silver medalist (2005, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2016), winning the Top Goaltender Award in 2005, a feat she accomplished in the CWHL as well (2015). She didn't get it at the 2006 Torino Games despite a 0.33 GAA in three games because she shared the net with Kim St-Pierre.

She also came out as gay right after the Sochi Olympics.

Here she is wearing a special Team Canada Breast Cancer Awareness uniform on card #24 from In The Game's 2007-08 O Canada set and National Women's Team sub-set:

And here she is wearing the country's classic red jersey on card #CB-CL from Upper Deck's 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee set and Canadian Heroes sub-set:

She signed both in blue sharpie after a Les Canadiennes game last season.

Here's a look at her career stats before this year's playoffs:

from EliteProspects.com

 And here she is holding that elusive Clarkson Cup up high:

Charline Labonté with the cup pic.twitter.com/7RAdkypQ1N

— Women's Hockey Gifs (@CWHLHighlights) March 6, 2017