Peter Forsberg Jersey Card

It feels weird to say, but with the Montréal Canadiens, Los Angeles Kings, Chicago Blackhawks and Florida Panthers now out of contention, the Nashville Predators are now one of a few teams I wish good to (along with the Washington Capitals for Alex Ovechkin, Dallas Stars for Jason Spezza, New York Islanders if Jaroslav Halak comes back and Tampa Bay Lightning for Ben Bishop), and I was more than happy to see them eliminate the Anaheim Ducks, even though I didn't think they would.

I really like Pekka Rinne, Mike Fisher, and Mike Ribeiro, Shea Weber is a terrific defenseman, and Jack Laviolette is a perfect coach to follow up a defensive-minded coach who put a good system in place (as Barry Trotz had), in that he lets the players use their maturity and what they've learned but lets them be creative on offense; it's a complementary system that works well with veteran teams who have just a few young guys come in to give the older players a spark, like when he led the Carolina Hurricanes to the Stanley Cup in 2006. He's also be perfect in following a Ken Hitchcock or a Mike Babcock.

And so I pay tribute to the Preds today by showcasing a card of a player most of us forget ever played in Nashville, with a card I hinted to earlier this week, #GJ-FO from Upper Deck's 2014-15 Series 1 set and UD Game Jersey sub-set:

That is, of course, Hall Of Famer Peter Forsberg wearing the team's former blue (away) uniform, with a silver game-worn jersey swatch that could very well have come from that jersey (or the Colorado Avalanche's).

Peter Forsberg Jersey Card

Because injuries cut his Hall Of Fame career short yet he was still good enough to make the cut, many like to compare Peter Forsberg's statistics with those of the likes of Eric Lindros to make the case for less deserving players, except with Forsberg, the numbers - while great - don't tell the whole story.

We're talking about a two-time Stanley Cup champion, who was the third ever member to have enough championships to join the Triple Gold club twice, and his domination at the international level is unparalleled, from his record 31 points in 7 games at the World Juniors to World Championship gold at age 18 to his gold-winning shootout goal at the 1994 Olympics to his back-to-back MVP titles (of both the league-awarded and player-voted variety) in Sweden to Calder, Hart and Art Ross trophies in the NHL.

And then there's the top-5 marks in points-per-game and assists-per-game which ranks him with the likes of Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr. He wasn't merely ''very good with a couple of dominant years'', whenever he had skates on, he was often the best player on the ice - and I say this as a guy whose favourite player was Joe Sakic. He was the Sergei Fedorov to Sakic's Steve Yzerman, where there was no way teams could shut both down, and if they were lucky, they could contain one of them - they just had to pick the lesser of two evils. But even that didn't work all the time, and both were tremendous two-way players anyway, so even on the rare occasions where they didn't make it onto the score sheet, they were useful on the ice, smart and crafty, positionally sound, and Foppa with the added physical element to his game.

This card (#FF-PF) is from Upper Deck's flagship 2003-04 Upper Deck set, the Franchise Fabrics sub-set, and shows him in the Colorado Avalanche's burgundy (then-away) uniform, with a blue game-worn jersey swatch:

The color scheme and font make this look a little too "retro" for my taste, but I do not find it displeasing to the eye.

Peter Forsberg Jersey Card

As if Team Sweden hadn't been dealt enough blows with the losses of Henrik Sedin and Johan Franzen, it lost its captain Henrik Zetterberg yesterday, so most of its hopes for Olympic gold with rest not on their scoring ability, but on Henrik Lundqvist's ability to keep less from entering his own net than his team can put in their opponents'.

And so, a throwback to the Peter Forsberg-led teams of 1994 and 2006 seems improbably considering the powerhouses that are Russia, Canada, the USA, and now fall behind - at least on paper - the Czechs and Slovaks. Though you never know, and one hot goalie in any given game can give any team a victory it may not deserve.

With Sweden, Forsberg also won gold at the World Championships (1992 and 1998), World Cup bronze (1996) and an impressive collection of World Championship (1993, 2003 and 2004) and World Juniors (1992 and 1993) silver.

With his two Stanley Cups acquired while with the Colorado Avalanche, Forsberg has enough hardware to make the Triple Gold Club twice, a feat shared with only Viacheslav Fetisov and Igor Larionov.

All told, I find he's Hall Of Fame material, and the only reason why it can be debatable is because he didn't play over 1000 NHL games - though he did gather 885 points (in 708 games), and 171 more playoff points (in 151 games), more than a lot of HoFers, and does have an Art Ross, a Hart and a Calder trophy, as well as four important Swedish League trophies: two MVP trophies and two ''best player'' trophies.

With his Swedish team Modo, he has a career record consisting of 87 goals, 135 assists for 222 points in 210 games.

Forever linked to the Avs with whom he attempted two separate comebacks, he did have a 100-game stint with the Philadelphia Flyers (115 points) and 17 games with the Nashville Predators (15 points) that takes away from the romance of being a career-long, one-team guy that his captain in Colorado, Joe Sakic, had.

The card I purchased on Ebay last week shows him with the Flyers:

Like the others from that batch, it's from Upper Deck's 2013-14 Series 1 set from the UD Game Jersey sub-set, card #GJ-JL), and also has UD's post-mortem certificate of authenticity:

Just like for the rest of his career, the only thing that sticks in my mind regarding his tenure with the Flyers is "what if he had been healthy?"...

Peter Forsberg Jersey Card

Many hockey commentators and fans saw Peter Forsberg as more talented and a more complete player than Joe Sakic. Not me. He may have been faster, slicker, and would hit more, but he didn't have Sakic's wrist or backhand shots, and he definitely couldn't take a hit like him either. Which led to the final 7 years of his career where he'd attempt comeback after comeback only to miss more than half the games and never really be comfortable playing. And stints with the Nashville Predators and in Sweden.

What he was, though, was the second piece in the best duo in the NHL, tantamount to (at least) the Colorado Avalanche's second Stanley Cup.

This jersey card has a piece of the team's predominant burgundy 'away' jersey, from a set I know nothing about. It's manufactured by Upper Deck, limited edition (69/100), and the ront of the card mentions UD Play Makers Limited, which I assume is the collection, and Player's Club Gold Jersey, which I assume to (only) be what they call jersey cards in this collection. The card number, as is usual for these, has the player's initials in it (#J-PF).

That's the problem when a company makes too many sets - not only do the same players and same type of memorabilia intertwine, you get lost in their very titles and abandon looking anything up because it takes too long.