Drew Doughty Swatch Card

Just as I was going to put my other Drew Doughty swatch card on my upcoming trade list because I have lost hope I'll ever receive (signed) the 4 cards I sent him in March 2011, I came into this one to go with the four UD Game Jerseys I wrote about all week, for less than $3:

It's from Panini's 2011-12 Pinnacle, and is #35 in the set, the Game Night sub-set; it holds a nice black swatch, though it shows him wearing a Los Angeles Kings' white (away) uniform, which has very little of it.

It's pretty cool that I chose to write about this card after having seen him score both of Team Canada's goals in a 2-1 win over Finland; he's really taken on the role of leader of the defensive unit at this year's Olympics, after having been Canada's second-youngest ever champion in 2010 (though you can argue Eric Lindros' 1991 Canada Cup win wasn't a true medal-type championship since it just gives the winning team a trophy, which would make Doughty the true king).

He has since won a Stanley Cup, of course, making him even more of a winner. I think another Cup and a Norris could be in the cards for him this year... as for another Olympic gold medal, it'll depend if whoever is in nets can withstand the pressure of Russia or the U.S. One thing's for sure, they'll have the defensemen to make a run for it.

Adam Henrique Jersey Card

The fourth and final Upper Deck 2013-14 Series 1 card from last week's Ebay purchases is this one of Adam Henrique of the New Jersey Devils (card #GJ-AH from the UD Game Jersey sub-set):

It shows him wearing the Devils' red (home) uniform. It is my second ''special'' Henrique card after this autograph card.

He's slowed down a bit since his rookie season, where he had tallied 16 goals and 51 points in 74 games, but on the other hand, the Devils did lose some prime scorers to help him in Ilya Kovalchuk and Zach Parise. H has 27 points in 59 games this year, after a 16-point, 42-game shortened season last year.

At 24 years of age, with a cap hit of $4M per season, he's worth a shot, though, and could still develop into a more potent offensive force.

Peter Forsberg Jersey Card

As if Team Sweden hadn't been dealt enough blows with the losses of Henrik Sedin and Johan Franzen, it lost its captain Henrik Zetterberg yesterday, so most of its hopes for Olympic gold with rest not on their scoring ability, but on Henrik Lundqvist's ability to keep less from entering his own net than his team can put in their opponents'.

And so, a throwback to the Peter Forsberg-led teams of 1994 and 2006 seems improbably considering the powerhouses that are Russia, Canada, the USA, and now fall behind - at least on paper - the Czechs and Slovaks. Though you never know, and one hot goalie in any given game can give any team a victory it may not deserve.

With Sweden, Forsberg also won gold at the World Championships (1992 and 1998), World Cup bronze (1996) and an impressive collection of World Championship (1993, 2003 and 2004) and World Juniors (1992 and 1993) silver.

With his two Stanley Cups acquired while with the Colorado Avalanche, Forsberg has enough hardware to make the Triple Gold Club twice, a feat shared with only Viacheslav Fetisov and Igor Larionov.

All told, I find he's Hall Of Fame material, and the only reason why it can be debatable is because he didn't play over 1000 NHL games - though he did gather 885 points (in 708 games), and 171 more playoff points (in 151 games), more than a lot of HoFers, and does have an Art Ross, a Hart and a Calder trophy, as well as four important Swedish League trophies: two MVP trophies and two ''best player'' trophies.

With his Swedish team Modo, he has a career record consisting of 87 goals, 135 assists for 222 points in 210 games.

Forever linked to the Avs with whom he attempted two separate comebacks, he did have a 100-game stint with the Philadelphia Flyers (115 points) and 17 games with the Nashville Predators (15 points) that takes away from the romance of being a career-long, one-team guy that his captain in Colorado, Joe Sakic, had.

The card I purchased on Ebay last week shows him with the Flyers:

Like the others from that batch, it's from Upper Deck's 2013-14 Series 1 set from the UD Game Jersey sub-set, card #GJ-JL), and also has UD's post-mortem certificate of authenticity:

Just like for the rest of his career, the only thing that sticks in my mind regarding his tenure with the Flyers is "what if he had been healthy?"...

Lanny McDonald Jersey Card

Regular readers of this blog know the tremendous amount of respect I have for Lanny McDonald, first and foremost because he was a great hockey player who made it into the Hall Of Fame, and because he was a tremendous leader for the Colorado Rockies and Calgary Flames. And because he left the Toronto Maple Leafs on bad terms.

Unfortunately, since I can never get swatch cards of him with the Rockies or Flames (though I came close once), this will be my third jersey card of him with the Leafs:

Like the Jacques Lemaire card from a couple of days ago, it's from Upper Deck's 2013-14 Series 1 set (card #GJ-LM from the UD Game Jersey sub-set). It contains a plain white swatch, which probably explains why my winning bid was under two bucks.

Still, we're talking about a player who made it to the Hall, won a Stanley Cup as part of the only visiting team ever to win on the Montréal Canadiens' home ice with the Flames in 1989, has 500 goals, over 500 assists and over 1000 points in over 1100 NHL games (plus another 44-40-84 in 117 playoff games with two trips to the Finals playing in an era with no less than three dynasties: the 1970s Habs, the 1980s New York Islanders, and the 1980s Edmonton Oilers).

And, of course, the card comes with this season's ghost guarantee (Richard McWilliam died early last year) that the jersey is game-worn:

Another Jacques Lemaire Jersey Card

I went for a quick glance on Ebay last week and saw some of Upper Deck's 2013-14 Series 1 jersey cards for sale with the starting bid at (just under) a buck apiece, so I bid on a few, and won four of them (plus another swatch card).

The first one is another Jacques Lemaire jersey card (still card #GJ-JL from the UD Game Jersey sub-set), this time with a red swatch since I already had a white one:

I actually won it at my opening bid of 99 cents, which almost made me regret my trade from last month... but not quite. I mean, a Hall Of Famer is a Hall Of Famer, right?

Jeff Reardon Autographed Card

Jeff Reardon was a star closer when I became familiar with the Montréal Expos in the mid-1980s, a two-time All-Star (1985 and 1986) and Cy Young nominee.

However, as with most things Expos, leading the league in a statistical category (in his case, saved games, with 41 in 1985 and 35 in 1996) usually meant getting a raise, and that usually meant the team couldn't afford it, so he was traded to the Minnesota Twins, with whom he won the 1987 World Series.

In 1988, he became the first pitcher ever to save 40 games in both the National League and the American League, and played in his third of four All-Star games, the fourth being 1991 with the Boston Red Sox, as shown in this card where he is wearing their grey (away) uniform:

It's from Upper Deck's 1991 Series 1 (i.e. Low Numbers, encompassing cards #1-700 - this one is #418 - the High Numbers set had cards 701-800) and signed in black sharpie when he returned to the NL and faced the Expos, in either 1992 as a member of the Atlanta Braves or, more likely, 1993 with the Cincinnati Reds.

He retired after the 1994 season and has faced a lot of personal problems, most of them stemming from his son's death from a drug overdose in 2004 and the medication he was prescribed to help deal with the tragedy, culminating into this (which he was eventually found not guilty of, though he did spend time in a psychiatric ward and was treated with electroshock therapy):

I wish him and his family nothing but the best and thank him for the good times we had watching him, and perhaps this serves as a reminder that we are all just one tragedy away from spiraling out of control, even when our nickname is The Terminator.

Brad Church Autograph Card

The back of Brad Church's card reads:

A pro-style forward, (he) is a good forechecker who has a nice scoring touch.

Now, I don't know what ''pro-style'' means, but if they mean NHL, they're kind of right, seeing as he played two games for the Washington Capitals in 1997-98, a decent feat considering that team ended up losing in the Stanley Cup Finals.

If they mean ''any pro league'', then they're right on the money, seeing as he played for 12 minor-league teams in 3 leagues from 1996-97 until 2005-06, including two separate stints with the AHL's Portland Pirates.

The Caps had chosen him 17th overall i the first round of the 1995 draft, ahead of Petr Sykora (18th), Georges Laraque (31st), Jochen Hecht (49th), Miikka Kiprusoff (116th), and Stéphane Robidas (164th). Their picks that year played a combined 54 NHL games, and that's including 24 each for goalie Sébastien Charpentier (fourth round, 93rd overall) and center Benoît Gratton (fifth round, 105th overall)...

Church was nearly a point-per-game player in the ECHL and even towards the end of his pro career in the UHL, but the only time he went over the half-point per game pace in the AHL was during an 11-game stint with the Manchester Monarchs in 2003-04, a team that had Pavel Rosa, Mike Cammalleri and Steve Kelly in its ranks.

All told, it makes for a decent if unstable professional career, but as far as first-round picks go, I think he qualifies as a ''bust''. Upon retiring, he became an assistant coach with the ECHL's Phoenix Roadrunners, but the head coach quit with 8 games remaining and Church got the nod. He stayed in place for two extra seasons going 24-39-9 and 30-37-0 and missing the playoffs both times.

Which brings me to his card:

It's from Signature Rookies' 1995-96 Draft Day set (card #8, numbered 2331/4500, signed in blue sharpie), and I got it through a repack box. He's seen wearing the Minnesota North Stars-inspired Prince Albert Raiders white (home) uniform with the front logo airbrushed out for copyright reasons and instead replaced with generic text. Here's what the logo should look like:

Ramis Sadikov Autograph Card

An undrafted goalie listed at 6'4'' and 230 pounds and whose AHL player page is suspiciously blank, Ramis Sadikov did get a few Detroit Red Wings pre-season games under his belt at some point, and even HockeyDB lost his trace after the 2011-12 season.

That did not stop In The Game from featuring him in this GoalieGraphs card from their 2010-11 Between The Pipes set (card #A-RS of the Future Stars sub-set), in his OHL Erie Otters uniform:

A tall hulking Russian, Sadikov liked to mix it up, trying to combine his idol Patrick Roy's butterfly style (notice how the black sharpie signature has the number 33 at the end), Martin Brodeur's stand-up style and Dominik Hasek's... whatever that was. With 13 Vezina trophies among them, I guess they're fine examples to follow, if you can make it.

I was more of a Roy-meets-Ron Hextall guy myself, with some Sean Burke in there as well. I didn't reach the NHL either.

Chris Higgins Autographed Card

I went to see the Montréal Canadiens beat the Vancouver Canucks at the Bell Centre yesterday and had a good time, though I couldn't find anyone to accompany me after my friend bailed on me at the last minute. I had brought about a dozen cards along with me but at the end didn't feel like hanging around so much and bothering the Canucks after a tough loss, except I ran into Chris Higgins (who scored a goal in the loss) and he remembered me from his days in town and signed this card for me before running to the team bus:

It's from Upper Deck's 2006-07 Series 1 (card #103), signed in blue sharpie. Ironically, I have another one exactly like it and also signed in blue, if my memory serves me right, I'll have to find it and compare (and post).

Though he is now in Vancouver, he was a Habs first-round pick, originally seen as a future checking-line center and captain of the team. He moved up the depth chart enough to become Saku Koivu's left winger on the first line for a couple of years, before his statistics took a dive and he was sent to the New York Rangers along with Ryan McDonagh, Pavel Valentenko and Doug Janik in the infamous Scott Gomez trade, before short stints with the Calgary Flames and Florida Panthers.

He has found himself a niche on the Canucks' checking line, where he is also counted on for secondary scoring - he has 16 goals so far this year, on pace for 22 goals and 44 points by season's end - without having the pressure to score 25 to 30 and get 60 points all the time.

Ladislav Karabin Autographed Card

I guess the theme this week is players with 9 games of NHL experience...

Born in Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Karabin was a 9th-round pick (173rd overall) in the 1990 draft of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the same one they drafted Jaromir Jagr (5th overall), Chris Tamer (68th) and Ian Moran (107th) in, so it was a pretty good year for them in that respect.

Karabin has one of the coolest names in hockey - not just because it's got the rare combination of Ks with Rs and Bs, but also because in French, ''carabine'' (pronounced the same way) means ''shotgun'', which would make for an original nickname.

He mostly played in minor leagues in North America - more often than not in the defunct IHL - before moving to Germany, where he played from 1999 to 2006. He then moved to Florida with his wife and kids to, apparently, become a financial advisor.

I got him to sign this card for me after a pre-season game, probably in 1996, maybe in 1995:

It's from Classic's 1993-94 Pro (Hockey) Prospects set (card #108), signed in (fading) black sharpie, apparently last name first. It shows him wearing the Pens' then-IHL affiliate Cleveland Lumberjacks white (home) uniform.