Jason Spezza Jersey Card

Obviously, the biggest trade this off-season was the one that sent Jason Spezza from the Ottawa Senators to the Dallas Stars, giving Dallas two current-day #1 centers. Playing second fiddle to rising star Tyler Seguin puts Spezza out of contention for the 90-point mark he reached twice and approached two other times (including as recently as 2011-12 where his 34 goals, 50 assists and 4th-in-the-NHL 84 points got him to finish 6th in Hart voting), but 75 points seems totally feasible.

He will likely be feeding his masterful passes to Ales Hemsky, who had 17 points in 20 games playing with Spezza in Ottawa to finish out last season. Erik Cole or Antoine Roussel could complete their line on the left side, or Shawn Horcoff (a former teammate of Hemsky's with the Edmonton Oilers) could be moved from center to wing to accomodate.

As it stands, the Stars' line-up on paper is the best they've had since their days of contending for Stanley Cups and Presidents' Trophies, by far.

And whatever your opinion of Spezza might be, as it stands, he is a point-per-game player both in the regular season (587 in 586 games) and the playoffs (52 in 56). He also has 18 points in his last 16 games playing for Team Canada at the World Championships; his collection of IIHF medals is vast, with one gold (2012 Spengler Cup), three silver (2002 World Juniors, and 2008 and 2009 Worlds), and two bronze (2000 and 2001 World Juniors).

I purchased the following card of his on Ebay earlier this summer because I didn't yet have one of him in the Sens' classic black uniform; it's from Upper Deck's 2006-07 Sweet Spot set, and is #SS-SP of the Sweet Stitches sub-set, numbered #156/2000, and the black swatch matches the jersey in the picture:

Tyson Barrie Autograph Card

Congratulations to the Colorado Avalanche who, by signing Tyson Barrie to a two-year bridge deal come into training camp with a full roster and no unsigned free agents. Congrats to Barrie for cashing in on his team-leading (among defensemen) 13-goal season, and here's to hoping he can continue to develop and help the Avs go deeper in the playoffs this year.

The son of former Edmonton Oilers draft pick (and for a short while part owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning, and currently in litigation in at least 10 court filings) Len Barrie, Tyson Barrie was the Avs' third-round pick (64th overall) in 2009. His minor-league career was nothing short of impressive, having won silver at the 2011 World Juniors and played in WHL, CHL and AHL All-Star Games.

He had 38 points in just 64 games from the point last year - plus 2 assists in 3 playoff games - and is the type of player who could be a regular 50-point contributor in the NHL on an offense-minded team like Colorado, perhaps peaking with 65 or 70 and a Norris nomination or two.

I have therefore started collecting his cards, starting with this insert from Panini's 2013-14 Score (#SS-TB of the Signature sub-set), a blue-sharpied signature on a sticker, with his jersey number (41) added for good measure:

Athena Lundberg: Two Autographed Cards

In 2010 and 2011, I got over a bad breakup and losing my day job by writing and touring. My travels took me to North American places I hadn't been to in over a decade, including where the sun shines all year.

I met Silicon Valley native (though not silicone-enhanced) Athena Lundberg either in Nevada or California, and she proved to be charming, witty, kind-hearted and a lover of animals.

We also share a love of big-time celebrations: while I usually host UnPop Montréal - a 10-to-30-day festival of free music shows with 3 or 4 acts per night in my hometown for everyone to come and enjoy in various bars and lofts, around my birthday - she holds parties in Hollywood where she basically is the queen and surrounds herself with her friends and loyal subjects, as can be seen in these ads:

Then again, you can do whatever the hell you want when you've been a Playboy Playmate (January 2006). She'll turn 30 in a year and a half, I can only imagine the scope it'll have then.

She turned brunette recently, and while I'm not the biggest fan of blondes, I must say that these Benchwarmer cards she signed in blue sharpie for me do not do her justice, as she looked a lot better and ''realer'' in person than here. First, her ''Rookie Card'', from the 2009 Limited set (card #10):

And a card celebrating her ''Norwegian roots'' (though there is nothing about her that doesn't scream ''California''!), from the 2009 International set (and #I81 of the High Numbers sub-set):

For those who are curious, she does, indeed, have a back tattoo:

She's been a Benchwarmer staple since 2009 and has many limited-edition cards in most sets nowadays. Now that her dream of appearing in Playboy has been fulfilled, she will no longer pose nude.

Johan Franzen Jersey Card

When you're nicknamed The Mule by Steve Yzerman because you can ''carry the load'', you're doing something right, and throughout his NHL career, Johan Franzén has done a lot of things right with the Detroit Red Wings, even breaking an old Gordie Howe team record by scoring 6 game-winning goals in the same month, with Howe present, celebrating his 80th birthday.

That's right, I just found a way to talk about The Mule by name-dropping two of the five best Wings players of all time (for the record, the other three in my opinion are Terry Sawchuk, Alex Delvecchio and Ted Lindsay).

He also broke another Howe record by scoring 9 goals in the same playoff series in 2008. As a matter of fact, his points production is actually better come playoff time than during the regular season; he knows how and when to step up to help his team succeed, which is why he has a Stanley Cup (2008) and World Championship gold (2006); he had been named to Team Sweden's 2014 Olympic team that eventually won silver, but had to bow out due to injury (a concussion, which didn't stop the Ottawa Senators' Chris Neil from trying to fight him) and was replaced by Wings teammate Gustav Nyquist.

He also shares Detroit's post-season scoring record of 13 goals in the same year with captain Henrik Zetterberg, and is one of only three Wings to have scored five goals in a single game.

Having signed an 11-year contract under the old CBA, Franzen's tied to the Wings until 2019-20, when he'll turn 40 years old. Though Detroit's no longer the powerhouse it was in the 1990s and early 2000s due to the salary cap, they are still consistent playoff contenders, and in most years that can be enough to make it to a certain point; the current crop of kids they have coming up is really impressive, and I see them winning another Cup before The Mule retires.

I'm a huge fan, which is why I cherish this card of him wearing his rookie jersey number (#39) rather than the #93 he's been sporting since 2006-07, from Upper Deck's 2006-07 Be A Player Portraits set (card #FE-JF of the First Exposures sub-set), featuring a small white piece of jersey that was worn in a photo shoot:

I'm thinking of writing him this season, so we'll see how that pans out.

Kyle Chipchura Autograph Card

After months of looking around for other players who might fit the bill, I decided to cross off #28 of my Habs Numbers Project with this beautiful card of Kyle Chipchura, as chosen by my newest friend:

It's from Upper Deck's 2008-09 Artifacts set (#AF-CH of the Autofacts sub-set), always the best-looking set out there, year in and year out. It's a sticker autograph, signed in thin blue sharpie.

Despite having only been a point-per-game player once in four years of Juniors with the Prince Albert Raiders (the year following the draft, 32 points in 28 games) and having been slotted as a late-second or early-third round pick, the Montréal Canadiens chose Chipchura 18th overall (first round) in 2004, ahead of Travis Zajac (20th), Wojtek Wolski (21st), Andrej Meszaros (23rd), Cory Schneider (26th), Jeff Schultz (27th), Mike Green (29th), Dave Bolland (32nd), Carl Sodenberg (49th), David Booth (53rd), Brandon Dubinsky (60th), Alex Goligoski (61st), David Krejci (63rd), Brandon Prust (70th), Alexei Emelin (84th), Alexander Edler (91st), Johan Franzen (97th), Kris Versteeg (134th), Pekka Rinne (258th), and Mark Streit (262nd).

But the Habs did so not for Chipchura's limited offensive capabilities, but because he was viewed as a tremendous leader and potential future captain: he had already been slated to captain both the Raiders and Team Canada at the World Juniors the following season - which he did, winning gold.

In his first full AHL season, he helped the Hamilton Bulldogs win the Calder Cup (with such stellar players and Andrei Kostitsyn, Maxim Lapierre, André Benoit, and Ryan O'Byrne). He was a bit slow for Guy Carbonneau's all-offense style of play (and later Jacques Martin's all-checking style) on the parent Habs club, though, so the team traded him to the Anaheim Ducks for a fourth-round pick in 2009. He found a role as a bottom-six forward with the Ducks for the remainder of the season, but was forced out of the line-up the next year.

The Phoenix Coyotes liked him enough to sign him as a free agent twice, though, and he only missed a total of 4 games over the past two seasons in the desert. Ironically, he scored 5 goals in both the locked-out season (46 games) and last year (80 games); he has two more seasons left on his contract with the now-Arizona Coyotes, at $850K per.

He is a 6'2'', 210-pound center who is good at covering his man close - he's a bit too slow to cover a fast player who has more than three feet's distance to out-maneuver him; his basic defensive zone positioning makes him a fine penalty killer. With his pedigree, size and leadership skills, you'd want to slot him in the #3 role; however, in today's quicker NHL, he's better suited to the fourth line. If the rules get laxer as they seem to want to become, and the clutch-and-grab style becomes fashionable again, then he'd be ideal as a 15-minute, shut-down man.