Yanic Perreault Autograph Card

Might as well combine the opportunities to acknowledge St. Jean Baptiste Day (a.k.a. Québec's National Holiday) and score another one (#94) for my Habs Numbers Project...

It's my third Yanic Perreault post in nine months (with more in the pipeline!), so I might not have anything new to say, but as the Hall Of Fame inductees were named yesterday, I could only be happy that Eric Lindros didn't make it in, for the fourth time.

I make the parallel because both players were drafted in the same year, and both were dominating their own Juniors league - Lindros in the OHL, Perreault in the LHJMQ; but when they were opposed, Perreault usually had the best of Lindros, first at the pre-draft CHL All-Star Game, then in the NHL where while Lindros had three amazing seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, Perreault could shut him down by winning face-offs, as he was the best of his era in that specific category.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer a 100-point producing wrecking ball of fury than a guy who wins 60% of his draws yet passed the 55-point mark only twice. Generally.

Except Lindros came with so many other problems, chief among them his parents, who doubled as his agents. He refused to report to the team that drafted him (the Québec Nordiques), and after being given the Flyers captaincy, held out a whole season because of a contract dispute. He could never bring his team a Stanley Cup, and was below the point-per-game production at every senior international competition (34 in 36 in total despite a 17-point, 8-game World Championship in 1993 when his Flyers failed to make the playoffs), Canada Cup (5 in 8), World Cup (6 in 8 despite being in his prime), and he had a single goal in 6 games in the 2002 Olympics, the only time he medaled in three Olympiads, FOR TEAM CANADA.

And most of his supporters argue that his production is comparable to that of others who were struck with a history of injuries, chiefly Pavel Bure and Peter Forsberg. Except that's just looking at the first number of each stat line:

Bure: 779 points in 702 games, Soviet League Rookie Of The Year, Calder trophy, 2 Rocket Richard trophies, 1998 Olympics best forward award

Forsberg: 885 points in 708 games (171 in 151 playoff games), 2 Cups, Calder, Hart, Lester B. Pearson trophies, 2 Olympic gold medals (4 gold total), 5 silver medals, two-time Triple-Gold Club member, 8th of all time in points-per-game

Lindros: 865 in 760 games (just 53 playoff games), Hart and Lester B. Pearson trophies

Lindros played in 50 more games than Forsberg to get 20 less points. ''Oh, but Forsberg played on the same team as Joe Sakic''. Exactly: both were centers, and both were taking ice time from one another, not feeding each other for easy goals. As a matter of fact, they often had to split the talent level on the wing to try to accommodate both of them and balance things out, whereas the Flyers put their three best forwards on their Legion Of Doom and let them carry the team... to nowhere.

And so it is my opinion that Lindros shouldn't make it to the Hall, though perhaps they could set up a booth where they recall that the Legion Of Doom had a great three-year stint in which they could only be rivaled by the Vancouver Canucks' line of Todd Bertuzzi, Brendan Morrison and Markus Naslund.

And right next to it, a booth showing (all of) Yanic Perreault's face-off wins in a loop. The players weren't durable or consistent enough to warrant entry into the eternal shrine, but some of their feats were.

And so today's card is this 2002-03 Be A Player Signature Series card (#042 in the set, signed on-card in thin black sharpie, a beautiful silver foil card) by In The Game:

Yanic Perreault Autograph Card

I fell into my long-sought after stash of Yanic Perreault cards as I was re-packing old boxes into new ones, and figured I could feature this one today, showing him in the beautiful 1990s Los Angeles Kings black - away - uniform (though for copyright reasons, they have a picture of him turned sideways because they can't show the team's logo), from Upper Deck's 1995-96 Be A Player set (card #S150, meaning it is the signed insert version of card #150, autographed in thin black sharpie):

A lot of folks have their own opinions about Perreault's career. Some think he should have been a more prolific point producer because he had set so many records in Juniors, others view as quite a feat the fact that he was the best face-off man from the late 1990s until he retired; some folks would rather think of him as a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs because he had three stints with them, but in terms of games played, he played more with the Kings and Montréal Canadiens; and as far as his most productive seasons, his 56 points with the Habs in 2001-02 are only surpassed by the 57 he gathered with the Nashville Predators in 2005-06.

While I don't see his face-off acumen as a reason to be inducted in the Hall Of Fame, he definitely is worthy of remembering for having had dominated in one aspect of the game; perhaps they could display a signed stick and puck of him in the Hall, in front of a TV playing all of his wins on the red dot in a loop.

Then again, perhaps they should relocate to Hall to its rightful location in downtown Montréal, at the corner of Atwater and Sainte-Catherine streets, where the structure of the old Forum still stands... having it in Toronto is akin to having a shrine dedicated to lunar exploration erected on Mars...

Yanic Perreault Autograph Card

In addition to being the best face-off man of his era, Yanic Perreault is also the man who eclipsed Eric Lindros - who was the unanimous #1 pick for the 1991 draft since he was a child - in a CHL All-Star Game prior to the 1991 draft. Perreault wound up being chosen 47th overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs because he was deemed ''too slow'', despite leading the LHJMQ in points, while being its MVP and most gentlemanly player. His points totals improved every season in the ''Q'', from 108 to 114 to a whopping 185.

The Leafs sent him to their AHL affiliate St. John's Maple Leafs for three seasons, and he still owns the franchise record for goals (132) and points (276). But he only played 13 games for the Leafs before they sent him to the Los Angeles Kings... until they brought him back via trade at the end of the 1998-99 season.

He signed with the Montréal Canadiens as a free agent going into the 2001-02 season, starting with his then-career-best 56 points, only to drop to 46 and 31 as Saku Koivu was healthy and Mike Ribeiro's stock was rising.

He sat out the locked-out 2004-05 season and signed as a free agent with the Nashville Predators, then the Phoenix Coyotes, where he posted his best season (57 points) and played in the All-Star Game, something he hadn't done since his days in Juniors, where this card is from:

It's from Classic's 1991-92 Draft Picks set (card #39, usually, but the signed versions don't have a proper back, just a note saying ''You have just received this extremely Limited Classic Draft Pick Collection Autograph Card''). It's signed in blue sharpie, and numbered 593/1100 - makes you wonder what a not-limited card would get numbered to...

On it, he's wearing his league's white All-Star Game uniform, which would face off once against each other CHL league's All-Star teams (WHL, OHL).

He would wind up playing for the Leafs one more time (17 games at the tail end of the 2006-07 season), but refused to retire, instead playing 53 games in 2007-08 with the Chicago Blackhawks, with 9 goals and 14 points to show for it. He was usually the only face-off man in the league to win close to or over 60% of the draws he took, even in his waning years.