2 Score 2011-12 Box Breaks

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Just like last year, I decided to purchase two boxes of this year's lower-end product, the 2011-12 Score set by Panini. I've liked Score since its late-80s baseball sets and became more of a fan when they made the move to hockey in 1990-91 with all the other manufacturers.

After their initial season, however, their designs weren't as fun, their featured rookies were awful, and my interest waned. History seems to be repeating itself.

This year's set contains 550 cards: 35 ''highlights'' cards, 465 regular cards and 50 rookies. Additionally, there are 20 ''short-print'' rookie cards, which happen to be the best ones - from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to Gabriel Landeskog, with Alexei Yemelin and Sean Couturier thrown in for good measure - and a flurry of sub-sets. View the complete checklist here.

At a buck per pack, 36 packs per box and 7 cards per pack, these are the most affordable hockey cards on the market, even though very few cards will ever be worth the 15 cents average you're purchasing them at; what you want are the inserts, preferably the autographs. I managed to get a redemption card for one, which will be a rookie to boot (just like last year's Jordan Eberle, only this time, a player I have no clue about, Carson McMillan). Most of the rest will be used to gather autographs, although I'll probably try to sell the Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby cards along with a few rookies on Ebay for a buck apiece, trying to get at least a third of my money back.

Score's strengths, like Upper Deck's O-Pee-Chee line, resides in the number of cards in its set, where it's not just the NHL's top-100 scorers, but also a few role players who nowadays don't appear as frequently in card sets. Collectors and autograph-seekers such as myself appreciate that a lot.

But lower-end sets sell at less and probably make the company a whole let less cash, so cost-cutting measures such as having the autograph cards be the same as the regular ones albeit with a sticker on which the player's signature is affixed are now widely accepted. Others, however, such as these two cards of Jason Pominville from box #2 with the exact same picture are downright insulting, especially when you get them in the same pack:

And while we're at it, can we talk about the cheap design? The lines on the side are reminiscent of last year's Donruss set by the same company, but with an added white border comes off like its trashy cousin.

Add that to the fact that some pictures are too light as if the camera's flash was too intense (or, more likely, Panini went overboard on Photoshop):

(actually, the scan makes these look much better than they do in real life)

others are too dark, like they were taken in a minor-league arena in the 1980s:

and others yet just have the colours looking all kinds of wrong:

If I didn't intend on just getting most of these signed, as a collector being given this sub-par product, I'd be pissed off. In this day and age of people not having jobs let alone any money, Score is showing tremendous disrespect to its clientele.

And that's saying nothing of this Nik Antropov card, with a picture snagged at the awful press conference that passed for the Winnipeg Jets' jersey unveiling:

Anyhow, here is how the first box broke down:

36 packs, 7 cards per: 252 cards

Regular cards: 134

'Glossy' parallel: 35, including two 'Highlights' cards, and a few stars including Tim Thomas, Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, Ilya Kovalchuk and Patrice Bergeron.

'Gold' parallel: 1

Hot Rookies: 19, the biggest name being Blake Geoffrion, and one of the cards being a short-print, Ryan Johansen.

Playoff Heroes: 2

Sudden Death: 2: Ilya Kovalchuk and John Tavares.

The Franchise: 1, Jeff Skinner.

Net Cam: 3

First Goal: 1, Derek Stepan.

Score B: 1, Corey Perry.

Making An Entrance: 3, Carey Price, Nicklas Lidstrom and Miikka Kiprusoff.

Highlight Cards: 19 regular, two glossy.

Montréal Canadiens (my home team): 10, including 1 rookie (Aaron Palushaj), 1 Making An Entrance (Price), 1 Highlight (P.K. Subban) and 1 Glossy (Andrei Markov).

Plus the redemption card.

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Here is a breakdown of the second box:


36 packs, 7 cards per: 252 cards

Regular cards: 169

'Glossy' parallel: 35, including five 'Highlights' cards - chief of which a Mario Lemieux Winter Classic card - and a few young stars including Shea Weber, John Tavares, Brayden Schenn, and Tyler Seguin.

'Gold' parallel: 1, Ryan Getzlaf.

'Black' parallel: 1

Hot Rookies: 18, the biggest name again being Blake Geoffrion, and two of Chris Vande Velde - with a short-print, Matt Read.

Playoff Heroes: 1, ironically of Roberto Luongo...

Sudden Death: 2: Alexandre Burrows and Jason Chimera.

The Franchise: 1, Luongo again.

Net Cam: 3, Luongo, Carey Price and Cam Ward.

First Goal: 1, Erik Condra.

Making An Entrance: 3, Patrick Kane, Martin St-Louis and Jamie Benn.

Highlight Cards: 17 regular, five glossy.

Montréal Canadiens (my home team): 10, including 1 rookie (Aaron Palushaj again), 1 Net Cam (Price), and 1 Glossy (P.K. Subban).

Tony Gwynn Jersey And Stamp Card

I'm typically not a fan of the Americana-series cards, because I can do without getting a bunch of dinosaur cards. And the ''celebrities'' you can possibly get are either deceased, are shown in an awful picture, or are just plain nobodies.

And when you get an athlete, he is never shown wearing his major league team's colours, because the card company didn't purchase the rights to show it. Such is the case with this still-fine Tony Gwynn card from Panini's 2010 Donruss Americana Century Collection (card #45, numbered 69/250, part of the Souvenir Stamps sub-set).It contains a piece of jersey ''worn by Gwynn in an official game'', so probably as a member of the San Diego Padres - the only team he played for in his Hall Of Fame 20-year career; it also contains an official U.S. stamp commemorating the sport of baseball. But the picture shows him wearing his hometown Long Beach Polytechnic High School uniform...

As a Montréal Expos fan, I can say Gwynn was one of the few players from opposing teams I truly respected: he never hit below .309 (!!), won 8 batting titles (almost every other year!), struck out only 434 times in his career (!!!) and had an inside-the-park grand slam (!!!!).

His mother was born on August 6th, a day on which he hit his 2000th hit (1993) and - one I saw on TV - his 3000th, in 1999, against the Expos' Dan Smith. He also hit his 1500th against Montréal, off pitcher Steve Frey.

Matt Moulson Jersey Card

This beautiful, extra-thick jersey card from Panini's 2010-11 Dominion set (card #61, numbered 31/99) features a nice picture of Matt Moulson and a decent-sized dark blue swatch from the New York Islanders' home jersey. I used to be indifferent about the Isles' jerseys, but this return to their original design is a breath of fresh air after over a decade of sub-par uniforms.

As for Moulson, he's one of those feel-good hockey stories, a forgotten prospect passed over by two teams (the Pittsburgh Penguins, who drafted him 263rd overall in 2003 without ever signing him, and the Los Angeles Kings, who signed him to an entry-level contract but only gave him 29 games of NHL time) who became a two-time 30-goal scorer for the Isles, playing with prodigy John Tavares, a fellow Mississauga native.

Ralph Intranuovo Autographed Card

After having seen the Edmonton Oilers give the Montréal Canadiens a lesson in opportunistic defensive hockey on Tuesday, it seemed fitting to feature this card next, as it depicts both those teams' farm clubs in the early 1990s.

Ralph Intranuovo was one of those 50-goal, 100-point juniors that card companies viewed as a blue chip prospect, but having been chosen in the 4th round (96th overall) at the 1992 draft shows there was a bit of doubt in his case.

But the Oilers really liked him, not only drafting him, but the season after losing him to the Toronto Maple Leafs, they traded for his rights again. All in all, he played 22 games in the NHL - 3 with the Leafs, 19 with the Oilers - and has two goals and four assists to show for it. At age 37, he is still playing professionally, in Italy, with HC Asiago.

This card (#186), from Classic's 1993-94 Pro Prospects set, sees him in the away uniform for the Cape Breton Oilers, a team for which he once scored 46 goals and 93 points in a single season (1994-95). He signed it in blue sharpie for a friend of mine, who ended up selling me his collection.

Guillaume Latendresse: 4 Autographed Cards

Guillaume Latendresse is an under-rated sniper and power forward often criticized either for lack of speed - which isn't entirely true, it's more that he's far from graceful in his stride, however his hits totals always show he's often near the puck - or lack of commitment to being in shape. These criticisms are odd, considering he has always been a good point producer at every level.

From the day he was chosen second only to Sidney Crosby at the LHJMQ draft, he had 49, 78 and 83-point seasons in juniors, which led to his being picked in the second round by the Montréal Canadiens, where he started his career. While with the Habs, he had the NHL's highest point-per-minute played ratio in the league, but hometown critics were too strong, and he was traded to the Minnesota Wild, where he scored 25 goals in a mere 55 games to cap off the 2009-10 season, before scoring the very first goal of the 2010-11 season on his way to an injury-crippled 11-game, 6-point year.

This year, as of writing this entry, he has 1 goal, 4 assists, good for 5 points in seven games, and he stands second on the Wild.

I'm confident he'll silence his critics at some point, and they'll just let him play; perhaps at that moment he'll shatter the 30-goal plateau consistently, like a modern-day Keith Tkachuk.

I sent all 4 of these cards (care of the Wild) at the end of last season, on March 29, 2011, and received them back, signed in black sharpie, on October 4, 2011. He added his number below his signature - 84 with the Habs (the first NHL player to wear that number, by the way), and 48 with the Wild.

The card on the left, the Habs' classic red jersey, is from Upper Deck's beautiful 2007-08 SP Authentic collection (card #18), while the one on the right, in the Canadiens' white uniform, is from the equally eye-catching and unique 2007-08 McDonald's set (card #27), also from UD; it's all-foil, relief printing.

Unfortunately, I didn't have Guillaume wearing the Wild's home uniform, only the (white) away jersey, but he was kind enough to still sign both: on the left, a 2010-11 Score card (#254) from Panini, and a UD 2010-11 Black Diamond (card #69), which, ironically, looks darker and almost better on the scan than in person.

For having played in summer pick-up games with him and other NHLers such as Jan Bulis, Martin Havlat, and a slew of others, I can tell you this: he'll always match whatever talent's on the ice to be the most effective player - not the flashiest, but among the most productive.