Zachary Boychuk Autographed Card

In the midst of turbulent times at Hockey USA, I thought I could feature another IIHF team - Team Canada - and revisit a player I last wrote about in 2012, Zach Boychuk.

Boychuk has since become the Charlotte Checkers' all-time leading scorer, which doesn't mean the Carolina Hurricanes have given him a fair shot at playing with NHLers of his skill level to demonstrate what he can contribute. As a matter of fact, after eight seasons in the Canes organization (albeit with a brief, two-month interruption in 2012-13 for 7 games with the Pittsburgh Penguins and 5 games with the Nashville Predators), he attended training camp with the Arizona Coyotes last September on a tryout basis, only to not be offered a contract after a decent camp.

And so he set his sails for the KHL, signing a one-year deal with Novosibirsk Hockey Club Sibir Oblast, a.k.a. "The Siberians". In a low-scoring league, he has 15 points (7 goals and 8 assists) in 35 games so far, seventh on the team but first among full-time centers. It should be noted that he has played at last 14 fewer games than anyone else above him, which makes his point-per-game average among the top-5 on the team.

Internationally, he has gold medals from the 2008 and 2009 World Juniors as well as the 2006 Ivan Hlinka U-18 tournament. This card shows him wearing the red Canadian uniform at the 2007 U-18 Worlds, where he posted 7 points (4 goals and 3 assists) in a fourth-place finish, trailing only Steven Stamkos (10 points) and Jamie Arniel (8 points) on his team:

That's card #20 from In The Game's 2007-08 O Canada set, which he signed in blue sharpie in 2010 or 2011.

Logan Couture Autographed Card

Going exactly against my predictions, the San Jose Sharks eliminated the Los Angeles Kings in Game 5 last night. On the bright side, that narrows down the list of teams I have a soft spot for in these playoffs...

It seems the Sharks are a little too celebratory, however, judging by post-game interviews. Logan Couture, in particular, seems a little whiny when he says:

Throughout the last couple of years, things have been said by players on that team that to me, personally, I take it as disrespectful. So it was nice to stick it back to them and beat them in this series. Even this series, someone was saying on their team that they had us right where they wanted us. I wonder if they've got us where they want us right now?

The Kings were arrogant and were playing mind games? Boohoo. They'd earned it by turning an 0-3 deficit into a 4-3 series win against a team that was so weak mentally they didn't even deserve to get paid to play. L.A. won the Stanley Cup that year, and the Sharks would have just folded in the Conference Finals like they always do - all fizzle, no snakes.

At 27 years old, Couture's now part of San Jose's leadership group, an alternate captain that needs to make the hockey world forget about all the collapses that happened on Patrick Marleau's and Joe Thornton's watch; he'll have to do so with Joe Pavelski, Marc-Édouard Vlasic and Martin Jones all stepping their games up. Best of luck to them.

Here's Couture with Team Canada, from the 2007 U-18s where he and his fellow countrymen finished fourth, losing the bronze medal game 8-3 to Sweden. Couture had two goals (both against Latvia in a 9-1 routing) and 4 points in 6 games on a team that only Steven Stamkos, Angelo Esposito and Drew Doughty tried to stop from choking in an embarrassing way:

It's card #12 from In The Game's 2007-08 O Canada set, which he signed in blue sharpie when the Sharks were in town a year ago.