Fernando Seguignol Signed Card

Fernando Seguignol - a one-time New York Yankees and Montréal Expos prospect - opted to play most of his career in Japan, and holds the Nippon Professional Baseball record for most home runs by a switch hitter in a single season (44) and most games with homers from both sides of the plate for a career (8), including two games in a row in 2002, which led the Yankees to bring him back not just to North America but to the fold for 2003, as they had originally signed him to a free agent contract the day he turned 18.

He spent his first four major-league seasons with the Expos (1998-2001), appearing in a high of 76 games in 2000 with 10 home runs and a .278 average, but when he fell to .185 in 46 games in 2001, the Expos released him at season's end.

Still, he holds the #19 position in my Expos Numbers Project, with card #290 from Upper Deck's 1999 Series 2 set (and Star Rookie and NL Debut sub-sets), which he signed in blue sharpie, probably in 2001:

He is now a scout for a Japanese team, but his main residence remains in Florida.

David Oliver Autographed Card

I guess now's as good a time as any to show off the fifth of a five-card package I received in a trade close to two weeks ago, with a card that slots David Oliver as the entry for #42 in my Oilers Numbers Project, #269 in Upper Deck's 1994-95 Series 1 set (and Star Rookie sub-set):

It shows him wearing the Edmonton Oilers' classic white (then-home) uniform, and he signed it in silver sharpie, with the number 20 tagged at the end, which means he could have signed it when playing in Edmonton (1995-97) or when he was with the Phoenix Coyotes (1999-2000). He only wore #42 in pre-season games.

Oliver started his career extremely well with the Oilers, finishing fifth in Calder Trophy voting in the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season with 16 goals, 14 assists and 30 points in 44 games, which he followed with a 20-goal outing the following season.

But things went downhill from there, as his 3 points in 17 games to start off the 1996-97 season led the team to put him on waivers, and the only time he reached double digits in points after that was when he posted a surprising 12 points in 36 games with the Dallas Stars while only averaging 9:51 of ice time per game in 2003-04.

He also played in the British League, in Germany and in Sweden, retiring after playing the 2006-07 season with the Ängelholm Rögle Bandyklubb. (Rögle BK for short).

He finished his NHL career just short of a few milestone marks, with 49 goals, 49 assists and 98 points in 233 regular-season games.

Adam Deadmarsh Autographed Card

Carolina Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos is pretty adamant that his team will NOT move to Québec City in the next few months, going as far as to "guarantee it", although there are never any guarantees in Life, least of which what one's succession chooses to do upon an owner's death, who it sells assets to, and what those people choose to do with said assets. Keep in mind, the main group trying to get a team to Québec, Vidéotron/Quebecor, is actually a media empire from Montréal, meaning they could run the team in Carolina for a few years without it affecting their bottom line all that much.

Still, what better time to check off #36 from my Nordiques Numbers Project with this card of Adam Deadmarsh's, wearing the team's superb blue 1990s uniform:

It's card #251 from Upper Deck's 1994-95 Series 1 set and Star Rookie sub-set; it is his main rookie card. He signed it in blue sharpie.

Deadmarsh was a Juniors sensation, posting 30 goals and 60 points in 68 games as a 16-year-old rookie with the Portland Winter Hawks in 1991-92. He followed that up with 33-goal (69 points) and 43-goal seasons (99 points) before graduating to the Québec Nordiques post-lockout in 1994-95, who had drafted him 14th overall in 1993, posting 9 goals and 17 points in the 48-game shortened season.

He had a lot of team success, winning gold for Team Canada at the U-18 Pacific Cup in 1992, the Stanley Cup in 1996 when the Nordiques moved to Denver to become the Colorado Avalanche, the 1996 World Cup with Team USA (he has dual citizenship) and silver with the Americans at the 2002 Olympics.

He posted 17 points in 22 playoff games when Colorado won the Cup. He also led the Avs with 33 goals in 1996-97 as they won the Presidents' Trophy as the best team in the league, which ended up being is career high.

Prior to winning their second Cup in 2001, the Avs traded Deadmarsh to the Los Angeles Kings for defenseman Rob Blake, with both teams facing off in the Conference Finals and the Avs winning in seven games.

Although concussions would take their toll during his time in L.A., limiting him to 20 games in 2002-03, he still posted 17 points that year on the strength of 13 goals, no less. The previous season, he had a career-high 62 points (29 of those being goals) in 78 games as he finished second in team scoring to Jason Allison's 74. This was in the heart of the Dead Puck Era, as the Kings' goalies, who were middle-of-the-pack, showed impressive goals-against averages, with Félix Potvin showing a 2.31 GAA (in 71 games) and Jamie Storr's 1.90 (in 19 games) being equally striking.

Deadmarsh retired in January of 2005, having not played a game in three years.

His post-concussion troubles came back in 2011-12 when he was in his third season on the Avs' staff, his first as an assistant coach, forcing him to retire from hockey for good.

Gilbert Dionne: 6 Autographed Cards (Part 2)

        (continued from the previous post)

Gilbert Dionne's true rookie card, however, is this one, from Upper Deck's 1991-92 Series 1 set (card #448, part of the Star Rookie sub-set), showing him not just wearing the Montréal Canadiens' white (home) uniform, but also #22, which he has never worn in an actual game:

I had written him at home on March 3rd, 2014, and received all cards back on September 15th, 2014, a cool 195 days later, signed in black sharpie, with his uniform number (45) tagged to each - even the cards where he's sporting #22. This brings my 2013-14 statistics to 34/74 cards returned.

I respected him so much as a member of the 1993 Stanley Cup-winning Habs team that I even went to see him play with the IHL's Cincinnati Cyclones in the late 1990s.

He played three full seasons and bits of two others in Montréal, scoring 60 goals and 130 points in 196 games; he was part of the infamous trade that sent Éric Desjardins and John LeClair to the Philadelphia Flyers for Mark Recchi, but barely played 22 games with the Flyers over two seasons, not scoring a single goal and just having seven assists to show for it; he finished his NHL career with the Florida Panthers, going 1-2-3 in 5 games to finish off the 1995-96 season before settling in the minors and dominating at the AHL and IHL levels. His last two seasons of pro hockey were played in Germany, where he was almost a point-per-game player in his early 30s.

Jarrod Skalde Autographed Card

I wrote about Jarrod Skalde's career path just about a year ago, mentioning I had some in-person autographs of him I could feature later. The time has come, but unfortunately, so far in my unpacking, I have just found one:

It's from Upper Deck's 1991-92 Series 1 set (card #446, part of the Star Rookie sub-set), signed in thick black sharpie, which is what I carried with me to games as a teen (after a brief stint with pens). I got it in person, but since I have two or three of him and they weren't all had at the same time, it could have been from any NHL, IHL or AHL stint prior to 1996, when I took a break from all things puck-related (mostly at the NHL level, but also to a lesser extent at all levels).

He was a point-per-game player in the minors, and for a while also was in the NHL, until bouncing around from team to team every year and never being given a real chance with top-line minutes. He may have been a tad skinny at 170 pounds to start his career, and 180 at the height of it, but he had hands and some vision; paired with the right guy(s), he could have made a decent contributor.

He made some news this summer when he was named the new head coach of the Norfolk Admirals, the AHL farm team of the Anaheim Ducks, replacing Trent Yawney, who made the jump up to assistant in Anaheim.

I really like the focus he shows on the card, possibly during a pre-game warm-up; he's wearing the New Jersey Devils' white (then-home) 1980s-1990s uniform.

Patrice Brisebois: 7 Autographed Items (Part 1)

Wednesday was a good day, despite being too sick to go to work. Instead, I was here to greet the postman for this Derek Stepan card and these 7 autographed Patrice Brisebois items, all signed in black sharpie with his jersey number tagged at the end:

Much has been said about Brisebois' career, particularly with the Montréal Canadiens, and especially the end of his first stint with the Habs as he was constantly booed every time he hit the ice and didn't score, mostly because two journalists thought he was (grossly) overpaid. At the end of the day, though, more than 1000 NHL games played, a Stanley Cup, two World Juniors gold medals, a CHL defenseman of the year award, three Memorial Cup finals (including an All-Star Team nod), over 600 career NHL points (for a defenseman...), and eight 30-point seasons (and those in which he didn't were injury-plagued) speak for themselves: he was a fine hockey player.

Perhaps not always in his rightful position (it did take the Habs trading Éric Desjardins and Mathieu Schneider to make him the team's #1 defenseman where he would have been fine at #3 with some powerplay time), but always giving everything he had, constant (good for a point every other game), honest, courageous (you'd have to be to be able to step on the ice knowing half the arena expects you to be the team's scapegoat)... in any other town he would have been one of the team's legends.

But in The City Where Hockey Legends Are Made, with the most Cups, the most Hall Of Fame players, 8 of the 10 best goalies of all time, the most media scrutiny, and two cultures (French Quebecers and Anglo-Canadians) who for a century almost only shared a love for hockey, a 'risky' top defenseman was going to get called for the mistakes he made in his own end. I think even Paul Coffey and Brian Leetch would have faced the same critics.

And yet he still managed to have some decent plus/minus seasons, with +10 (1995-96, the year Patrick Roy left at mid-season), +16 (1997-98) and +17 (2003-04).

The biggest gripe against him was probably that, at 6'2'' and 210 lbs, he avoided physical play. So? Size doesn't dictate willingness to get hurt. I fondly remember games at the Philadelphia Spectrum where Saku Koivu, who is probably shorter than his listed 5'10'', would be the only Habs player willing to hit a Flyer, and he'd go toe-to-toe in the corners with none other than Eric Lindros. Many tall guys prefer a slicker game than a rough-and-tumble one. I'll tell you this much, until the arrival of Andrei Markov, no Canadiens player could pass like Brisebois, and he was one of the team's fastest players.

Onto the cards...

His true rookie card is this one, from Upper Deck:

He's sporting the Team Canada jersey at the World Juniors. It's card #454 of the 1990-91 Upper Deck collection. He was wearing jersey #24 at the time.

The next two cards are also considered by some as rookie cards, although they come a year later:

The card on the left is from Score's 1991-92 Score Canadian set (card #272), while the one on the right is from UD's 1991-92 Upper Deck set (card #442, Star Rookie sub-set). He's sporting the #43 jersey he spent most of his career wearing, on the Habs' red (away) jersey.

I also have a #43 in the white jersey to show:

It's from Topps' 2002-03 O-Pee-Chee set (card #41).

(continued in the next post)