Ryan Strome Jersey Card

Earlier tonight, New York Rangers forward Ryan Strome shot a puck directly into Montréal Canadiens captain Shea Weber's face, leaving the Norris Trophy candidate bloodied - although Weber wouldn't even miss a shift and would go on to play a game-high 24 minutes.

Strome's been finding more net than face this year, with 6 goals, 18 assists and 24 points in 28 games, with 22 penalty minutes and a +7 rating. He is second only to Artemi Panarin (13 goals, 21 assists, 34 points) in team scoring, playing upwards of 19 minutes per game. All this is factoring in the fact that he only had two assists in his previous five games, he's had a tremendous bounce-back season.

He's 11 points from last year's total of 35, which he had to dress in 81 games to get; his career-high of 17 goals and 50 points (2014-15, New York Islanders) not only seem attainable but well within reach.

It's the type of comeback story that wins a Bill Masterton Trophy if no one has a deadly affliction during the season.

We've been hearing the word "flop" associated with Strome for at least three years now, but the fifth-overall pick of the 2011 draft has climbed up the production chart to 16th of his class, which makes him worthy of a first-round spot, especially considering Nikita Kucherov (58th overall, second round, 1st in points), Johnny Gaudreau 104th overall, fourth round, 3rd in points), Brandon Saad (43rd, second round, 7th), Ondrej Palat (208th, seventh round, 10th), Vincent Trocheck (64th, third round, 13th), and Andrew Shaw (139th, fifth round, 15th) are ahead of him.

It's a safe bet that Kucherov, Gabriel Landeskog (second overall, 2nd in scoring), Gaudreau, Mark Scheifele (seventh-overall, 4th in scoring), Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (first-overall, 5th in scoring), Jonathan Huberdeau (third-overall, 6th in scoring), Sean Couturier (eighth-overall, 7th in scoring), defenseman Dougie Hamilton (ninth-overall, 8th in scoring) and Trocheck continue hitting the same type of production for the remainder of their careers with similar aging curves, and it's expected that Saad, Palat and Shaw may regress due to playing more a physical style that lends itself to injuries as times piles on, and I'm betting on Mika Zibanejad (sixth-overall, 9th in points) to hit higher peaks than he had in past years for the next five, so my expectation of their points totals once they've all retired would have them finish in the following order:

1. Kucherov
2. Gaudreau
3. Huberdeau
4. Scheifele
5. Couturier
6. Zibanejad
7. Nugent-Hopkins
8. Landeskog
9. Trocheck
10. Strome
11. Hamilton
12. Rickard Rackell
13. J.T. Miller
14. William Karlsson
15. Jean-Gabriel Pageau
16. Phillip Danault
17. Palat
18. Saad
19. Shaw
20.  Vladislav Namestnikov

Or maybe Palat finishes 13th, but I'm fairly confident about the final positionning for the rest of the guys, with a two-rank buffer at most.

Which is to say that Strome, in less than a full calendar year with the Blueshirts, has even gone up five to eight spots in my own opinion of him. All credit goes to the way he's handling himself in a hard situation, with the pressures of a first-rounder, the near-kiss of death of serving as one of the Edmonton Oilers' worst transactions in recent memory - a one-for-one trade for Jordan Eberle, who it has to be said has been trending downwards in the goal-scoring department - to finding his game as a young veteran on a Rangers team that is going through a complete rebuild and where he was only expected to fill a roster spot, not earn top-six minutes and a new deal.

Which brings me to card #M-RS from Upper Deck's 2015-16 SPX set and Monochromatics sub-set, showing him and the rest of the picture in black-and-white save for the blue on Islanders' home jersey:

It features a matching game-used jersey swatch. Although it's impossible to tell via the scan, the "Monochromatics" text, the swatch's contour, his name and the SPX and Isles' logos are all actually in silver foil. It's a beautiful card and a great sub-set idea.

Ryan Strome Autographed Card

When historians sit down to write the story of the 2018-19 hockey season, a few story lines will stand out:

- It's the year the Columbus Blue Jackets went all-in.
- It's the year Shea Weber started noticeably regressing.
- It's the year Roberto Luongo's injuries became a bigger story than his on-ice performances.
- The Tampa Bay Lightning's regular-season domination.
- Nikita Kucherov joined the "best player" conversation.
- The CWHL announced it was ceasing its operations, just a week after the Calgary Inferno beat the Montréal Canadiennes in the Clarkson Cup Final.
- The Chicago Blackhawks' offense finally retained (Alex DeBrincat) and acquired (Dylan Strome) offensive talent instead of trading it away (Teuvo Teravainen).
- The Ottawa Senators and Edmonton Oilers redefined "rock bottom".

That last point is where I want to look to shed yet another light on how bad GM Peter Chiarelli's tenure was, via oft-maligned former 5th overall (2011, New York Islanders) draft pick Ryan Strome.

After four seasons of Juniors hockey, Strome finished the 2012-13 season in the AHL (7 points in 10 games), and spent the following year bouncing up and down between the Isles and the Bridgeport Sound Tigers before posting a 50-point season on Long Island in 2014-15.

After two sub-par seasons in the 30-point range, Chiarelli acquired his services in exchange for Jordan Eberle, a move that was supposed to be lateral in terms of offensive production (it was thought that playing alongside either Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins would re-launch Strome), at half of Eberle's salary for a few couple of seasons, as Strome is younger.

Unfortunately, Strome was only able to put up 36 points in 100 games over a season and change in Edmonton, prompting them to send him packing to the New York Rangers in exchange for Ryan Spooner, a player they would put on waivers just a few months later.

In Manhattan, Strome has put up 31 points in 60 games, a 42-point pro-rated production on an entire season, which is an improvement, particularly considering the Rangers are in full "rebuild" mode, although there is concern that his luck may run out at some point, as his underlying numbers are unsustainable.

The Rangers are in fairly good hands for their rebuild, with young veterans Mika Zibanejad (25 years old) and Chris Kreider (27) leading a pack comprised of Pavel Buchnevich (23), Jimmy Vesey (25), Brady Skjei (24), Vladislav Namestnikov (25), Filip Chytil (18), Brendan Lemieux (22), Fredrik Claesson (25) and goalie Alexandar Georgiev (22). Add a lucky middle-of-the-pack first-rounder or two, or a top-three pick in the next couple of years and you've got yourself a team that's fighting for the playoffs again.

Where does Strome fit in there? Well, he may not, unless he keeps producing. His brother Dylan's turning his career around in Chicago, though, so everything's still possible.

Here is Ryan playing for the OHL's Niagara IceDogs:

It's card #69 from In The Game's 2012-13 Heroes And Prospects set, which he signed in blue sharpie last December.

Ryan Strome: Two Autographed Cards

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the Edmonton Oilers sent Jordan Eberle to the New York Islanders for former first-round pick (5th overall in 2011) Ryan Strome last week, mostly as a salary cap move to free up space for Connor McDavid's upcoming contract, but also because Eberle was disappointing during the 2016-17 playoffs.

But was this a move backwards in terms of it being a "hockey trade"? Yes and no. Strome may never live up to being a fifth-overall pick - and he's technically the second "failed Islanders prospect" Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli has taken off Isles' GM Garth Snow's hands, after Griffin Reinhart last summer, who will now continue his career as a member of the Vegas Golden Knights - but Strome might be able to jump in and fit in right away in Edmonton, as his ability to play either center or wing should give him reps alongside both McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, in addition to occasionally spending time with another decent player in Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

A pretty-much guaranteed top-six role means he will be able to aim at a 50-70-point season like he achieved in 2014-15 (17 goals, 33 assists, 50 points on the nose) because he'll have a John Tavares-esque player next to him regardless of how he slots in the lineup, which should get him back into the  2013-14 AHL groove, when he posted 49 points in 37 games with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers and at one point even led the league in scoring (a call-up to the Isles "cost him" a scoring title, but that's one move most players would make).

And we're talking about a guy who has posted 106- and 94-point seasons in Juniors with the OHL's Niagara IceDogs and won the bronze medal suiting up for Team Canada at the 2012 World Juniors, posting 9 points in 6 games.

Speaking of which, here is a close-up of the IceDogs' black (away) uniform, on card #169 from In The Game's 2010-11 Heroes And Prospects set:

And here's a sideways and more global view of the uniform, on card #34 from ITG's 2011-12 Heroes And Prospects set:

He signed both cards in black sharpie in January 2015, while the Islanders were in town to face the Montréal Canadiens. I have to say that I already found him to be NHL-ready when I saw him stand at 6'1" and 190 pounds, and he's since added ten pounds of muscle to his frame that should give him an entirely new dimension in the Western Conference.