Vladislav Namestnikov Autographed card

Here's the second of five cards I got in a trade that was a year in the making, this time of Tampa Bay Lightning young gun Vladislav Namestnikov, seen in his London Knights - winners of the Memorial Cup last weekend - beautiful white (home) uniform:

That's card #178 from In The Game's 2011-12 Heroes And Prospects set, which he signed in blue sharpie.

Many people see the 27th overall pick at the 2011 draft as an Evgeny Kuznetsov-type of player in the making. He already dominated in the AHL in 2014-15, scoring at a point-per-game pace leading to a recall in time for the Bolts to make a deep playoff run and dressed for 80 games in 2015-16, scoring 14 goals and posting 35 points.

As he and Jonathan Drouin develop, perhaps Tampa no longer needs Steven Stamkos the way they did in the last three of four seasons after all.

Adam Graves Autographed Card

It's the Stanley Cup Final, so I thought I could start the week with a card of Adam Graves, a two-time winner with the 1990 Edmonton Oilers and 1994 New York Oilers Rangers:

It's card #84 from Pro Set's flagship (and initial) 1990-91 Series 1 collection, showing him wearing the Oilers' classic blue (then-away) uniform, with the 1990 Cup Final patch. This pencils him in as #12 in my Oilers Numbers Project as well.

A winner of the Bill Masterton Trophy and the King Clancy, the Rangers retired the one-time All-Star's #9 uniform, both proof positive that his time with the team was memorable and that the team probably over-values its Cup-winning team a tad too much.

He scored 280 goals and had 507 points in 772 games in Manhattan, for a total of 329 goals, 287 assists and 616 points in 1152 regular-season NHL games, plus another 65 points in 125 playoff games.

Not necessarily jersey-retiring numbers, but extremely solid nonetheless.

I got this card in a trade that was nearly a year in the making, with my sending ten Ottawa Senators signed cards (a lot of them of Curtis Lazar and Matt Puempel) for cards I'll be featuring in the coming week.

Ben Bishop Autographed Card

How much faith did I have in the Tampa Bay Lightning facing off against the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Final? Obviously, way too much. I was keeping this card up my sleeve for a Ben Bishop return, which I expected to be a Game 7 shutout for some reason:

It's card #78 from Panini's 2010-11 All Goalies set, showing Bishop back when he was playing for his hometown Blues. It's signed in blue sharpie, and I got it in the mail last winter.

Trade rumours are currently clouding his future in Tampa Bay what with up-and-comer Andrei Vasilevskiy successfully taking over for the Bolts when Bishop pulled something in his leg in the first game of the Conference Finals, but I wouldn't trade him unless you got equal value for him, which, with Marc-André Fleury also rumoured to be available soon, might not be possible.

We are, after all, talking about a two-time Vezina nominee and Team USA representative, here. You would need a first-liner (of which the Lightning has plenty already), a first pairing defenseman or a top-20 first round draft pick to come out even in such a trade.

Although losing a Steven Stamkos to free agency wouldn't hurt so much if a Sam Bennett came along... but if I were GM Steve Yzerman, I'd aim for a T.J. Brodie for my back end or a Carey Price to give myself an extra year to ponder Vasilevskiy's future..

Scott Stewart Autographed Card

Well, it finally looks like summer's here, which is the perfect time to induct the first of at least two more representatives of uniform #51 in my Expos Numbers Project, Scott Stewart:

That's card #U222 from Fleer/Skybox's 2002 Fleer Tradition Update set, which he signed in blue sharpie.

Stewart was originally a 20th round pick of the Texas Rangers and toiled around in the New York Mets' system for a few summers before signing with the Montréal Expos as a minor-league free agent.

He played in Montréal for three of his four years in the MLB, from 2001 until 2003, appearing in 62, 67 and 51 games as a reliever, with a 10-4 record and 20 saves, 17 of them in 2002 as the Expos' closer, although eight pitchers combined for a total of 39 that year.

His 2004 wasn't up to par, though, splitting his time between the Cleveland Indians (0-2 record, 7.24 ERA in 23 games) and Los Angeles Dodgers (1-0, 5.84 ERA in 11 games). He fell off the grid after being let go by the San Diego Padres in 2005.

Martin St-Louis Jersey Card

So the World Cup of Hockey rosters were completed today, and there were a few surprises: Phil Kessel left off Team USA, P.K. Subban, Brent Seabrook, Corey Perry (who a week ago captained the World Championship-winning team) and Kris Letang left off Team Canada, John Klingberg left off Team Sweden and Alex Galchenyuk left off the Young Stars team.

Subban's omission comes as the Montréal Canadiens' GM, Marc Bergevin, stands as one of Canadian GM Doug Armstrong's assistants, which is reminiscent of when Steve Yzerman didn't select his own Tampa Bay Lightning captain Martin Saint-Louis for the Olympics in 2014... which brings me to this card:

It's card #WC-ML from Upper Deck's 2004-05 Series 1 set and World Cup of Hockey Tribute sub-set, featuring a black game-worn Lightning jersey swatch.

Tampa had just won the Stanley Cup and the league was hosting just its second World Cup (the continuation of the former Canada Cup, whose name was stained by Alan Eagleson's legacy) as a cash-grab just before getting into a lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season entirely. Three of Tampa's players made the team that year: Saint-Louis, the reigning Art Ross winner; Brad Richards, the reigning Hart Trophy winner; and then-captain Vincent Lecavalier, who was named the tournament's MVP.

The Lightning officially had the three best forwards in the game. Game breakers. That the salary cap eventually broke apart: Richards was the first casualty, as a not-quite-point-per-game player in the regular season though truly efficient in the post-season, followed a few years later by Lecavalier being bought out. St-Louis asked to be traded after Yzerman's snub, and led the New York Rangers to the Stanley Cup Final that year and the Eastern Conference Final the next - against Tampa, ironically.

And, thus, what "could have been" never was.

I rarely root for Team Canada in international competitions because it doesn't represent me and people like me. I usually root for an underdog, like Slovakia, or a nice story, like Russia at the Sochi games. In this iteration of the World Cup, however, countries like Switzerland and Slovakia have been merged as one "sub-Team Europe" that makes little to no sense (the Swiss don't care about losing to the Czechs as much as the Slovaks, I guarantee you) if you're going to make it an actual international competition.

And I say this as a kid whose best live hockey experience was the 1991 Canada Cup and 1996 World Cup. Plus, all games are being held in Toronto. This tournament might not even exist to me come September.

Gilles Meloche: 2 Autographed Cards

We have all seen the San Jose Sharks make their way to this year's Stanley Cup Final, on the strength of the strong play of Logan Couture, Marc-Édouard Vlasic and the impressive leadership of Joe Pavelski (yes, I admit it).

But did you know the Sharks have roots that date all the way back to the 1960s, namely the California Seals? Indeed. Though the Seals were founded by Barry Van Gerbig and first sold to Charles O. Finley, it was the Gund Brothers (George and Gordon) who were the first to really take the team to heart.

So much so that when it became impossible to continue operating in the Bay Area, they relocated it to their hometown, forming the NHL iteration of the Cleveland Barons before merging with the Minnesota North Stars. The North Stars' minority owner Howard Baldwin threatened to move the team to California claiming poor attendance record, and in a twist that only the Bronze Era NHL could come up with, decided to mediate the ownership's power struggles by awarding the Gunds a new expansion team - the San Jose Sharks - and half the North Stars' roster as further compensation.

As a mark of respect for the organization's roots and their own history with the league, they decided to use teal as the team's main colour, just like in their days manning the Seals (under Finley's watch, the team had temporarily been renamed the Golden Seals and were mostly using an Oakland Athetics-style yellow as their main colour, matching his other team).

The Seals were god-awful; they had one good forward (Carol Vadnais) and one of the best goalies of his era in Gilles Meloche; the rest were pretty much AHLers, which explains why the team has one of the worst records in league history.

Meloche has an All-Star Game on his resume, and when sharing the net with Don Beaupre in Minnesota formed one of the best tandems in the league, reaching the Cup Final and semi-finals in a short period of time.

Here he is in two of his three most memorable uniforms (I couldn't get my hands on a card of his with the Barons), from In The Game's 2011-12 Between The Pipes set, first with the Seals on card #182 (part of the La Belle Province sub-set):

And here he is sporting his classic North Stars mask - which he had re-made for the Minnesota Wild/Stars' alumni game this winter - on card #132, from the Decades: The 1970s sub-set:

He signed both in thin black sharpie.

Upon retiring, after playing three seasons for the franchise, Meloche spent nearly 20 years as the Pittsburgh Penguins' goaltending coach, winning three Stanley Cups in the process. He's now a part-time special assignment scout for the team.

In another ironic twist, Baldwin owned the Pens as well... he was the team's chairman when it elected to go to bankruptcy in 1998.

George Gund died in January. The Sharks honored him as a builder on the night they played the Montréal Canadiens. 

Caroline Ouellette Autographed Card

Team Canada defeated Team Finland to win the World Championships in men's hockey this weekend, a month and a half after the women's team lost their final (in overtime) to Team USA in Kamloops.

The CWHL's fourth-leading scorer this season, Caroline Ouellette, was not on the team, leaving room for younger players and spending time with her charitable activities - she's the Canadian ambassador for Right To Play and Carrément Rose/the Québec Breast Cancer Foundation, as well as 60 Million Girls.

Last winter, she coached the third ever all-girl entry at the Québec Pee-Wee tournament, competing in the AA category. They won their first exhibition game by a shutout, so there's that, then they lost their first "real" game to Mark Messier and Mike Richter's New York Americans, before winning and losing 1-0 shutouts leading them to the quarterfinals.

You all know my opinion of Ouellette, one of - if not the - best CWHL players of all time thus far. And so it was an honour to meet her once again at the tournament, where she signed this card in blue sharpie with her jersey number (13) tagged at the end:

It's card #CB-CO from Upper Deck's 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee set and Canadian Heroes sub-set.

Alex Killorn: 2 Swatch Cards

Oh, man, did the Tampa Bay Lightning ever play with my emotions tonight! Trailing 2-0, tying the game up, the Pittsburgh Penguins going up 3-2 in the final minute of the second, the Bolts tying it near the end of the third and winning on a Tyler Johnson goal less than a minute into overtime - whew!

And the first Tampa player to score was my chouchou (positive French term for favourite, or teacher's pet), Alex Killorn, who now has 13 points in 15 playoff games this year, and 33 in 45 for his career.

When playing EA Sports' NHL 16 (or any iteration thereof, from 2014 onward), my first move as GM of the Montréal Canadiens is to trade Carey Price to Tampa Bay for Ben Bishop, Killorn and a first-rounder. And I keep winning the Stanley Cup, and those guys keep proving me right in real life time after time as well.

I usually try to trade away my doubles of jersey cards, but in this case, I couldn't. One of the reasons is that I want to start collecting Killorn more seriously, but also because Panini's 2013-14 Totally Certified cards often didn't come in the most pristine conditions, often with at least one banged corner, or - as is the case for one of these two - imperfect sides; still, it's a beautiful card, both of mine featuring blue event-worn jersey swatches:

It's card #RR-AK or the Rookie Roll Call and Dual Rookie Class sub-sets, showing him wearing the Bolts' white (away) uniform.

Terry Labonte Skidmarks Card

Summer is nearly upon us and, with it, sports I care less about, such as baseball, track and field, and auto racing.

Which brings me to this kind of great card I got in a multi-sport repack a few years ago, #SK 1/9 of Press Pass' 2002 Eclipse set (and Skidmarks sub-set) of Terry Labonte:

Here's the twist: everything that's black on this card is... "authentic race-used tire material to artistically accent the design". How cool is that? You can really feel the rubber, too.

As for Labonte, the 2016 NASCAR Hall Of Fame inductee is a two-time NASCAR champion (what is now known as the Sprint series was called the Winston Cup when he won it in 1984 and 1996). The twelve years between championships is a NASCAR record for longest time between championships, though he did win the 1989 and 1993 International Race of Champions titles - basically the All-Star Game or Champions League of oval racing.

He raced for Hendrick Motorsports - the Kellogg brand was their main sponsor, which is why Tony The Tiger's face can be seen on the hood of his car; here's a clearer image:

Hendrick Motorsports is owned by Rick Hendrick, who co-owns a Chevrolet dealership in North Carolina with Labonte.

Labonte's first and last wins came on the same track: the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, a.k.a. The Lady In Black and The Track Too Tough To Tame; his final race was at Talladega.

Mitch Webster: 3 Autographed Cards

Here's me checking off #23 from my Expos Numbers Project with these three cards of outfielder Mitch Webster:

I don't know about you, but to me, despite being from cards two years apart, the pictures seem like they're from the same at-bat, or at the very least the same game, judging by the shapes and colours of the people behind him compared to where he's at in his swing...

Webster played in the majors for 13 seasons, and was specifically with the Montréal Expos from 1985 until 1988; he was traded to the Chicago Cubs for Dave Martinez when Hubie Brooks took over right field duties. Webster may have led the National League in triples (with 13) in 1986, but The Natural never batted for .300, and it was believed that Martinez might (and did twice with the Chicago White Sox a few years later) - and Martinez was more dependable defensively.

I keep forgetting Webster started out with the Toronto Blue Jays. That's icky. He's a scout for the Kansas City Royals nowadays - the Midwest Regional Scouting Supervisor, in fact.

But back to the cards. Here's card #523 from Leaf's 1986 Donruss set, of which I only bought singles (usually commons) in 1989-1991:

And here's card #257 from Leaf's 1988 Donruss collection, of which I bought tons of wax and cello packs while vacationing in Florida that summer:

As I said, the pictures are eerily similar, both showing him in the team's powder blue classic away uniform. He signed them in different blue sharpies, which dates them around 1995 to me - while he was with the Los Angeles Dodgers - and means he was using someone else's pens, probably during pre-game warmups.