Tony Hrkac: Two Autographed Cards

(team and product links go to sponsored Amazon products, player links go to related pages on my blog, news links go to source pages)

The last time I featured two autographed Tony Hrkac cards, I purposely skimmed through his time with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim because I knew I had this post as a back-up.

His 140 games with Anaheim was the third-most he spent with any one organization, after the 201 with the St. Louis Blues and 160 with the Atlanta Thrashers. His 38 points with the Mighty Ducks in 2000-01 at age 34 is his fifth-highest total in the NHL, coming in the heart of the Dead Puck Era and his even (+0) plus/minus rating was tied for second-best on the team, with only Antti Aalto falling into the positives at +1, in only 12 games, mind you. The team's stars were all in deep minuses: Paul Kariya (67 points, -9), Teemu Selanne (59 points, -8), Oleg Tverdovsky (53 points, -11), Marty McInnis (42 points, -21) and Matt Cullen (40 points, -23) all brought forth a negative differential, making life difficult on goalies Guy Hebert (41 games, 12-23-4, 2 shutouts, 3.12 GAA and .897 save percentage) and Jean-Sébastien Giguère (34 games, 11-17-5, 4 shutouts, 2.57 GAA and .911 save percentage).

Card #5 from Pacific's  2001-02 Pacific series encapsulates his time in California very well:

The purple (technically "eggplant") and jade uniform was their main away gear from the team's inception in 1993 until 2006, when Disney sold the team and it changed its look and took the "Mighty" out of its name to not interfere with Disney's copyrights from the kids' film franchise, with the team opting to modify its brand and look at the same time.

However, I mostly tend to remember Hrkac as a member of the Blues and Québec Nordiques, as the early 90s were when I followed the sport and the NHL the most religiously, and I also have him sporting the Nords' beautiful blue (away) uniform from the late 80s/early 90s, before they started incorporating red on the contours of the numbers:

That's card #172 from Topps' 1990-91 Bowman set, which enables me to enter Hrkac as #28 in my Nordiques Numbers Project. You might recall he's also there as #40, and he is a rare player who went from wearing a "regular" (read: below #35) number in 1989-90 to a "high number" (40 and up) in 1990-91; back in the day, it was customary for goalies to wear #1, #20, #29, or a number between 30 and 35, while tough guys and goons were given available numbers between 30 and 39 and other skaters typically had lower numbers - except for stars, who could get "the doubles" (11, 22, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88 and 99). The numbers above 40 were typically reserved for rookies who had yet to "earn" their lower number.

Hrkac signed these in blue sharpie when he came out of retirement at age 42, from 2008 to 2010, with the Houston Aeros of the AHL. His 2008-09 playoff run was particularly impressive, as he posted 14 points in 19 games in a deep postseason run.

He's been a pro scout with the Tampa Bay Lightning since 2015, who have acquired the likes of Anton Stralman, Michaël Bournival, Gabriel Dumont, Peter Budaj, Louis Domingue, Dan Girardi, Ryan McDonagh, Mikhail Sergachev, Eddie Pasquale, Cameron Gaunce, Danick Martel, J.T. Miller, Curtis McElhinney, Jan Rutta, Luke Schenn, Kevin Shattenkirk and Pat Maroon via other means than drafting during his tenure, so either he is passionate about my blog or he travels from Montréal to New York a lot.

Tony Hrkac: Two Autographed Cards

Tony Hrkac was a superstar in College, the 1986-87 Hobey Baker Award recipient after collecting a record 116 points (on the strength of 46 goals and 70 assists) in 48 games, leading the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks to a national championship. At the time, the team was even known as the Hrkac Circus (both words rhyme).

Before enrolling in college, he had actually been drafted in the second round (32nd overall) by the St. Louis Blues in 1984 after a 106-point season (52 goals and 54 assists in 42 games) in the OJHL (Junior A) with the Orillia Travelways.

His success didn't exactly continue in the NHL, but he did score a team-record 4 goals in a single playoff game in St. Louis before being traded to the Québec Nordiques with shutout leader Greg Millen in exchange for blue liner and powerplay quarterback Jeff Brown.

He didn't stay long in Québec, a season and a half, before they sent him to the San Jose Sharks for Greg Paslawski, and the Sharks themselves sent him to the Chicago Blackhawks just six months later.

All told, he suited up for nine NHL teams, including the Blues and Dallas Stars twice apiece; he also belonged to the Nashville Predators twice, although the first time was for just over a week in the summer, as they had selected him in the expansion draft and sent him to the Stars before he even played a single game with them.

After retiring, he was called upon to start and develop the hockey program at the Concordia University Wisconsin, and his record with the Falcons isn't so great: 10-109-10 over five seasons, leading to his dismissal in 2012.

As a player, I'll always remember him as a member of the Blues and my beloved Nordiques first and foremost, but it is while in his second stint in Dallas that he finally laid his hands on the Stanley Cup - a feat neither of the teams I remember him most by have achieved.

Today, I have decided to feature him with two cards from pretty much the same set, the 1991-92 Score (Canadian Edition) set by Score, first wearing the Nordiques' white (home) uniform which will slot him nicely as #40 in my Nordiques Numbers Project, on card #122 from Series 1, which had cards #1-330:

The same year, as part of Series 2 (home of cards #331-660 in the set, also known as Rookies And Traded or Update), he was featured wearing the Sharks' teal (away) uniform on card #555:

He signed both in (fading) black sharpie, I would say either in February 1994 when the Blues came to Québec to face the Nordiques, or in 1996-97 when he was with the IHL's Milwaukee Admirals facing the Québec Rafales. The latter seems like the best bet.

Fun fact: Series 1 was a bilingual set, while Series 2 was an all-English extension:

Oh, Canada, eh? Where we only care about French (the country's "other official language") and First Nations when tourists are around but are otherwise content to impose the Anglo-Saxon colonists' views and lifestyles the rest of the time.