Rick Wamsley Autographed Card

Part of the stash of cards I received at my old apartment earlier this summer was this terrific card of Rick Wamsley's, the current goaltending coach of the Ottawa Senators:

It's card #201 of O-Pee-Chee's 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee eponymous set, which he signed in blue sharpie. He had won the Jennings Trophy for having the lowest GAA in the league just two years prior (2.75, with two shutouts), the same year he finished fifth in Vezina and sixth in Calder voting, and had just played the bulk of the games (46 out of 80) for the Montréal Canadiens, with Richard Sévigny and Mark Holden splitting the rest in 1982-83.

He'd go on to have moderate success with the St. Louis Blues before winning the Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames (more on that here), and played his final 11 games with the Toronto Maple Leafs as Félix Potvin took over duties there.

Of note, the two jersey numbers he wore with the Habs ended up being retired for players who'd worn it before him - 29 (Ken Dryden) and 1 (Jacques Plante).

He wore #30 in St. Louis, a number also worn there by Plante, Michel Plasse, John Davidson, Michel ''Bunny'' Larocque, Vincent Riendeau, Jon Casey, Chris Osgood, Tom Barrasso, Ben Bishop and Martin Brodeur - all decent goalies... who played better on other teams, save for Riendeau.

The same can be said for the #31 sweater he wore in Calgary, a number he shares with Pat Riggin, Réjean Lemelin (who was as good with the Flames as he would be with the Boston Bruins, honestly), Rick Tabaracci, Ken Wregget, Grant Fuhr, Curtis McElhinney, Curtis Joseph, and Karri Ramo.

Rick Wamsley: 3 Autographed Cards

I've liked the Ottawa Senators for a long time. First, their jerseys caught my eye, and when the Daniel Alfredsson era began (and the Alexei Yashin era ended), I kept an interested eye on them. And, since then, the Sens have pretty much always consistently gone further in the playoffs than my hometown Habs, and I've found myself rooting for them more often than not.

Jason Spezza remains, in my mind, one of the premier passers in the league, Alfie is a great captain (second to maybe only Jarome Iginla), and they always seem to turn out having great talent on defense.

More often than not, goaltending has been blamed for their lack of playoff success (i.e. that elusive Stanley Cup), but from Peter Sidorkiewicz getting All Star nods to Ron Tugnutt to Patrick Lalime, goalies have always done what was expected of them for this team. And while Pascal Leclaire's streak of bad luck only got worse in Ottawa, he didn't fare badly at all and, this season, Craig Anderson has done an admirable job - and so has Ben Bishop in a relief role.

And one person to thank for the Sens' recent rise in goaltending prowess is undoubtedly goalie coach Rick Wamsley, a former Cup and Jennings winner himself, who had previously signed these two cards for me, almost 2 years ago.

Now, I was hoping the Sens would send the New York Rangers packing tonight, but it looks like there'll be a Game 7 in that series...

But back to Wamsley. I wrote him a new fan letter to go along with these 3 cards I sent him on February 24, 2012 and got them all back today, April 23rd, 2012. They show him wearing the colours of his first two NHL teams, firstly with the Montréal Canadiens:

The card on the left is from Topps' 1982-83 O-Pee-Chee set (card #195), coming off his Jennings-worth season; the card on the right, featuring a helmet-less low-resolution picture of Wamsley sporting the back-up's ''towel around the neck'' classic attire (in the 80s), is from In The Game's 2010-11 Between The Pipes set (card #145, the Greats Of The Game sub-set).

And this card, showing him with the beautiful 80s-era St. Louis Blues uniform:

This is card #240 of Topps' 1986-87 O-Pee-Chee set, a beautiful and classic one, showing Wamsley skating around during a pre-game warmup against the New Jersey Devils.

Rick Wamsley: Two Autographed Cards

I was a bit young to remember Rick Wamsley as a member of the Montréal Canadiens, where he spent the first 4 years of his illustrious career and shared the Jennings trophy in 1982 with Denis Herron, but I was getting seriously NHL-curious after the Habs' 1986 Stanley Cup (I was 7 years old) and could already tell Ron ''Le Prof'' Caron was building a great St. Louis Blues team when he traded for Wamsley, before dealing him to the Calgary Flames.

Caron had been the Habs' assistant GM for many years (and many Cups) when he took on the main job for the Blues, and one of the first things he did was bring Wamsley along with him. In his tenure, he brought such star players as Brett Hull, Adam Oates, Doug Gilmour and Al MacInnis to St. Louis; but by 1988, Wamsley had been deemed expendable, due to the Blues' drafting of Curtis Joseph.

But that was never a problem: Wamsley moved on with the Flames and in his first full season with the team, in 1988-89, he was ranked 5th in the league with a 2.96 GAA (yes, the high-scoring '80s were a different time!) and, more importantly, finished the year not only with his name engraved on Lord Stanley's Cup forever, but also as a member of the only visiting team to have ever won the Cup on the Canadiens' home ice - the only team in 101 years to do that.

He then spent two more full seasons with the Flames, seeing less and less ice time (36 games in 1989-90, 29 in 1990-91) as time progressed, in favor of Mike Vernon. He was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in January of 1992 but would only play 11 games for them in the course of two seasons, so he's not really tainted by their aura of perpetual defeat.

You want to know his worth to GMs of his time? When he was traded from the Habs to the Blues, Caron felt he was worth two draft picks who became tough-guy and Team Canada member Shayne Corson and two-time 50-goal man Stéphane Richer; when the Blues let him go, it was to acquire Brett Hull; and when the Flames themselves shipped him to Toronto, it was with Doug Gilmour for 50-goal man Gary Leeman and 4 others in a 10-player deal. Those are impressive names, forever linked to Wamsley.

Since retiring, he has spent time as both a scout and goaltending coach for the Leafs, Blues, Columbus Blue Jackets and now the Ottawa Senators since this summer, where he was reunited with Pascal Leclaire, who had his best seasons with the Jackets under Wamsley's tutelage.

Which brings me to these two cards. I sent them to him along with a fan letter on September 22nd and received both back, signed in black sharpie, today, October 12th, a very quick turnaround considering it encompassed rookie camp, training camp and the start of the regular season. The card on the left is from Topps' beautiful 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee set (card #204), while the one on the right is from the 1990-91 Upper Deck set (card #10), back when Upper Deck's trademark design was a white contour for all its series in all sports.