Drew Doughty Swatch Card

Drew Doughty is a force to be reckoned with, and probably will be for quite some time. He is the second-youngest ever Norris Trophy nominee (behind only Bobby Orr), and youngest Team Canada men's team medal winner (2010 Olympics) since Eric Lindros (1991 Canada Cup).

Having grown up a Los Angeles Kings fan, getting drafted by them (second overall, 2008) and playing for them is a dream come true. Kind of makes you wonder, though, why he held out on the team for 13 days during training camp to sign a contract ($56M for 8 years) that pretty much ensures the team won't be able to afford a high-priced free agent at the trade deadline to pack the team up for a Cup run in this salary-cap era.

With all due respect for Doughty, at that price, I strongly prefer my Montréal Canadiens' one-two punch of Andrei Markov ($5.75M) and P.K. Subban ($1M, probably 4 next season)...

In any event, while I await a response from Doughty (I sent him 4 cards on March 29th), I did manage to scoop this nice card up, from Panini's 2010-11 Crown Royale set (yet another collection from the mid-90s Panini has revived), the Lords Of The NHL sub-set (card # 9, numbered 55/99) featuring a swatch of the no-longer-in-use Kings' vintage purple jersey.

Upper Deck Victory 2011-12 Box Break

(team and product links go to sponsored Amazon products, player links go to related pages on my blog, news links go to source pages)

As every year, Upper Deck's 2011-12 Victory set is a beautiful, cheap (around a buck a pack) set that happens to be the first release of the season. And like just about every year, Sidney Crosby is the brand's poster child.

And after years of featuring perfect-to-get-autographed white backgrounds, this season's set features a colourful background fitting each team, one that looks pretty good:

Also, there are a ton of nice-looking inserts, just about in every pack. Here was my box's breakdown:

36 packs per box, 6 cards per box, total cards: 216

Regular cards:

Victory Rookies: 17 (including one checklist card of Cody Hodgson)

Game Breakers: 9, including Taylor Hall

Star Of The Game: 9

MVP (which used to be a set of its own): 16

MVP Rookies: 2, including Hodgson

Montréal Canadiens (my home team): 7 (including P.K. Subban, plus one Rookie of future star Brendon Nash)

All in all, the first set to leave me fully satisfied this season...

2 Donruss 2010-11 Blaster Box Breaks

(team and product links go to sponsored Amazon products, player links go to related pages on my blog, news links go to source pages)

Toys R Us had a "special" on Panini's 2010-11 Donruss blaster boxes - basically, mini-boxes of 8 packs - so I purchased 2 to see what was up with that. 16 packs, 10 cards per - 160 cards total.

Now, I appreciate that Panini is trying to revive the early-90s brands Upper Deck doesn't own such as Donruss and Score, but I find it rather odd that they'd try to make Donruss seem like a middle-to-upper class set, because I must say that at $2 a pack these seemed like a total waste of money - and at regular price, and the suggested retailer price, of $3 per - getting 10 of these so-so designs and sub-par pictures reminiscent of Panini stickers sure feels like getting ripped off:

And I can't get my head around the fact that they want me to believe these cards are worth 30 cents each on average...

Here's the breakdown:

16 packs, 10 cards per, total cards: 160

Regular cards: 146

Rated Rookies: 5

Ice Kings: 1, Mario Lemieux

The Ultimate Draft: 1, Thomas Vanek

Boys Of Winter: 1, Niklas Backstrom

Montréal Canadiens (my home team): 7 (including 1 Rated Rookie, Brock Trotter).

There is no way in hell, I'm getting any kind of money's worth for this crap...

Craig Simpson: 4 Autographed Cards

Score another one for the Edmonton Oilers!

I sent Craig Simpson these four cards and a fan letter on November 25th, 2010, care of the CBC's Audience Relations department, and got them all back, signed in black sharpie with his jersey number (18) added, on September 13th, 2011. For a broadcaster who travels following Western Canadian teams, that's a pretty good turnaround.

Simpson is a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Oilers (1987-88 and 1989-90) and holds career NHL records for best shooting percentage both in the regular season (23.66%) and the playoffs (33.65%). He has 68 points in 67 career playoff games, proving he was good under pressure. He scored a career-high 43 goals in a mere 59 games in 1987-88 (he had 13 more in 19 playoff games) and had a career-high 76 points he following season with 35 goals in 66 games.

He also played for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres, but I mostly remember him as an Oiler, skating on a line with Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson.

Sports must have played a major part of his childhood, as his mother was Canadian Olympian Marion Simpson, his brother is hockey player Dave Simpson and his sister Christine covers hockey for Sportsnet. His son Dillon Simpson was drafted by the Oilers in the 2011 draft.

Craig got into a bit of controversy when participating in Battle Of The Blades, a Dancing With The Stars-like skating competition on CBC. Paired with iconic gold-medal Olympian Jamie Salé, he won the competition, however when it was revealed the two had had an affair, it broke both their couples apart.

Now, onto the cards.

This card shows Simpson wearing the Oilers' legendary away jersey and is from Score's 1992-93 Score (American) set (card #260). The card below (also #260) is from the 1992-93 Score (Canadian) set and shows him in the Oilers' home uniform. I like that Score went through the trouble of making two distinct sets that year rather than just have one be bilingual and not the other.

The next two cards also show Simpson in the Oilers' blue jersey:

The card on the left is from Pro Set's 1990-91 Pro Set collection (card #95) while the one on the right is from Score's inaugural 1990-91 Score set (card #58). While I always liked the initial Score set, I'm getting re-acquainted with the first Pro Set one and am liking it again as well. Its design was original and appealing - it's too bad it was over-abundant and is now worth nothing.

Claude Giroux Dual Jersey Card

I love finding great deals on Ebay!

This beautiful dual-patch jersey card - from a rookie photo shoot, but still nice! - of the Philadelphia Flyers' Claude Giroux was being auctioned with a starting price of $1.99 - and no one else bid, so I got it for that price!

It's from Upper Deck's beautiful 2008-09 Ice set (Fresh Threads sub-set, card #FT-GI) and has both a black and a white swatch.

After leading his team in scoring with 76 points last season, the Flyers saw it fit to hand Giroux the team's reigns by trading captain Mike Richards and alternate captain Jeff Carter in the off-season, and Giroux has responded great so far: he currently sits 8th in the NHL for goals (with 9) and 9th for points (with 19).