Marc Bergevin Autographed Card

I'd like to acknowledge Montréal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin's 50th birthday today by featuring him... wearing a Tampa Bay Lightning uniform. Which is weird, considering they're the ones who eliminated the Habs this last postseason, but still, Bergevin played for eight NHL teams and his hometown Canadiens weren't one of them, so I do what I can:

It's card #363 of Pinnacle Brands' 1993-94 Score (Canadian Version) set, which he signed in blue sharpie. It depicts him wearing Tampa's inaugural black uniforms, attempting a slap shot from the point, possibly during a pre-game warmup.

All told, Bergevin played in 1191 regular-season games (with 36 goals, 145 assists, 181 points and 1090 penalty minutes to show for it, and 80 more playoff games (3 goals, 6 assists, 9 points and 52 PIMs). He finished in the minuses in both.

He was a fringe player.

Upon retiring, he became part of the Chicago Blackhawks' management team, first spending three seasons as a pro scout, then one as an assistant coach, then two seasons as the Director of Player Personnel (winning the Stanley Cup in 2010 in the process), before being named assistant general manager, a position he held for 11 months until he signed on with the Habs. When filling out his staff with the Canadiens, he picked former Hawks staff members Rick Dudley (assistant GM) and Martin Lapointe (Director of Player Development) to help get his vision across.

Bergevin's put his stamp on the team, although the three main core pieces (Carey Price in nets, P.K. Subban on defense and Max Pacioretty up front) as well as the veteran leadership group (Tomas Plekanec and Andrei Markov) were inherited from previous regimes.

This summer alone, he signed Mark MacMillan, Noah Juulsen and Daniel Audette to entry-level deals, RFAs Alex Galchenyuk, Jarred Tinordi, Nathan Beaulieu, Michaël Bournival, Christian Thomas, Greg Pateryn, Brian Flynn, Morgan Ellis and Gabriel Dumont, his own free agents Jeff Petry and Torrey Mitchell, as well as unrestricted free agents Alexander Semin, local kid Mark Barberio, Joel Hanley, George Holloway, and Ryan Johnston to contracts. He also traded fan favourite Brandon Prust for Zack Kassian. That's what I call keeping busy!

The NHL's getting tighter each year, with many teams from the bottom improving and few teams actually regressing, save for your Toronto Maple Leafs and Arizona Coyotes, which means the Habs will once again challenge for the top seed in the Atlantic Division, all the while fighting off some good teams who will fall just short; I envision six teams seriously vying for the four available playoff spots: the Habs, the Bolts, the Detroit Red Wings (another former team of Bergevin's), the Boston Bruins, the Ottawa Senators and the Florida Panthers in a tight race. My heart's with Montréal, Ottawa, Florida and the Wings, but Tampa Bay will boot one of them out for sure, possibly the Sens.

It's a tough league, but the Canadiens are set with their management team, which clearly ranks among the best in the business. And Marc Bervein's smack-dab in the middle of it, dancing the night away.

Jordan Eberle Jersey Card

It was a pretty big possibility that the Edmonton Oilers would have yet another disappointing season last year, which can mostly be attributed to a weak blue line and defensive system. One thing I had not envisioned, however, was that Jordan Eberle would have his lowest goals total in a full season since his rookie year, with 24.

He'd reached 34 in 2011-12 and got close to that rate again with 16 in 48 games in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, but followed that one up with 28 before sliding again this past year.

In his defense, the team was a mess under initial coach Dallas Eakins, the ship was kind of steered right by Todd Nelson, but scoring was spread out more evenly - good news for Nail Yakupov, who reverted back to form while playing with Derek Roy, but a small dip for Eberle.

You might recall Eberle was my choice for captain of the team back in 2013, though they ultimately went with free agent signing and Stanley Cup winner hometown hero Andrew Ference (a fine choice at the time) and instead gave Eberle and Taylor Hall the alternates' ''A'', and now that Connor McDavid is in town, he might be next in line in two or three years, provided he lives up to at least 85% of the hype gone his way.

I'm not yet sold on having Cam Talbot - he of 53 career NHL games - being anointed the starting goalie to lead the franchise out of the depths of the NHL's standings, so perhaps there will be more Eberle trade rumours further down the line, though if I were GM, I'd be more inclined to move Hall of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (who will soon be expendable as a center with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in the pipeline) to shore up the blue line with a true #1 or #2 defenseman, perhaps even as a conversation starter in Shea Weber talks.

Keep in mind, with Jordan Eberle, you're eyeing this guy:

And so, in all his splendor, here he is sporting the Oilers' retro-current blue uniform, from Upper Deck's 2013-14 Fleer Showcase set (card #S-JE of the Stitches insert sub-set):

It includes a game-worn jersey swatch, albeit from their god-awful dark blue Reebok Edge lockout-era monstrosities.

Jason Demers Autograph Card

When the Dallas Stars sent 6'4'' hard negotiator Brenden Dillon to the San Jose Sharks for Jason Demers last November, they were letting go of some size and youth for a proven right-hander who can contribute to the tune of roughly 30 points per season on a second pair, a regular-season-winner who could help instill a culture of winning to his new organization.

The Dorval, Qc native went undrafted in his first two tries but was chosen by the Sharks in the 7th round in 2008, though they could have used that pick on an 18-year-old and invited him to their rookie camp as a free agent anyway.

And yet by the 2009-10 season, he was playing in 51 games for San Jose, registering 21 points and earning the nickname ''Daddy''...

He isn't shy about body-to-body contact and prefers having the puck in the other team's zone, which he can help happen with nice passes and decent skating skills. He's so well-rounded that he often goes unnoticed, but he usually makes his defensive partner better - which in the case of Jordie Benn last season, was noticeable.

The only thing he seems to do half-assed is sign cards, apparently, though it's unclear if this one is at the tail end of a run of 1000 in the same day:

It's card #A-JD from Upper Deck's 2012-13 Artifacts set and Autofacts sub-set, and has a blue-sharpied sticker autograph that is basically a ''J'' and a line. I found this card along with another one from the same sub-set in a box a couple of months ago; I guess I'd stashed them because to me, they don't have the visual quality I usually expect from the Artifacts sets, as the head shots are a bit bland and show very little of the jerseys (my pet peeve), with a busy-and/yet-slightly-tacky overall design.

But I was glad to pull a Demers, who I really like as a defenseman.

Sean Monahan Jersey Card

How does one follow up a 22-goal rookie season that ends with some Calder Trophy consideration? With a 31-goal, 62-point year ending fifth in Lady Byng and 20th in Selke voting, of course, leading the Calgary Flames to their first playoff series win in 11 years. If one is Sean Monahan, of course.

The sixth-overall pick of the 2013 draft (behind Nathan MacKinnon, Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Drouin, Seth Jones, and Elias Lindholm), Monahan has helped bring the Flames back to respectability, but unlike captain Mark Giordano who is already in his 30s, will now be tasked to continue and hold the mantle for the foreseeable future.

Offensively, the Flames are counting on Monahan, Johnny Gaudreau, Mikael Backlund, Sam Bennett and Max Reinhart to be at the center of their resurgence.

Because of how tight the league is, Calgary might miss the playoffs entirely in 2015-16, but I still feel they are an elite-level goaltender away from being perennial Stanley Cup contenders for a long while. I mean, I like Jonas Hiller, but his best years are probably past him and he'll probably end his career in Europe when his contract expires at the end of next year, and Joni Ortio may very well be the guy to take the Flames deep in a few years, but a top-level goalie right now would go a long way into putting them in the same conversation as the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings as the top teams to watch out for, ahead of the New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Montréal Canadiens.

I've been following the Flames closely since the days of Jarome Iginla, and of their bruising-meets-speed style that Darryl Sutter instituted early in the new millennium;  I'm even more optimistic about where they're headed now than when they had the best goalie in the world - Miikka Kiprusoff - between the pipes.

Here's a card of Monahan's featuring a black event-worn jersey swatch from a photo shoot:

It's card #RM-SM from Upper Deck's 2013-14 SPX set, and is part of the Rookie Materials sub-set; it shows him wearing the Flames' red (home) uniform.

Brady Vail Autographed Card

Brady Vail is an American hockey player; some sources have him born in Hendersonville, NC, while others peg him as hailing from Palm City, Florida, but his family has moved along with him every step of his hockey career, from the time he was 13 with the Detroit Compuware Ambassadors organization to the Waterloo Black Hawks in the USHL to his time in the OHL with the Windsor Spitfires, whence he was drafted by the Montréal Canadiens (fourth round, 94th overall, in 2012).

 His head coach in Windsor, former NHLer Bob Boughner, had this to say ahead of his being drafted: "He's a player that I can use in a lot of different situations. He's a player I have a lot of trust in. He can play top-end minutes, he's in very good shape and a great skater. That allows him to play heavy minutes. I think he's responsible in his own end and plays against top lines in a shut-down role. He also has offense to his game."

More objective scouts hinted that he might be more of a long-term project because while he was "good at everything", he didn't "excel at anything". As someone who was billed a "tireless worker", I was expecting the 6'1'', 190-pound center to have the edge of a Brendan Gallagher, but that's not what I saw in the handful of games and rookie camp scrimmages I did see. Still, I was surprised - as were a few Habs bloggers - when the Canadiens opted not to sign him to an entry-level deal last summer, leading to his signing an AHL deal with the Toronto Marlies and spending most of the season with the ECHL's Orlando Solar Bears, with whom he registered 15 goals 14 assists, 29 points and 33 penalty minutes in 64 games (plus 4 goals including a game-winner in 5 playoff games).

Maybe he'll develop into a fourth-line checking specialist who can contribute a little offensively at the NHL level, though we seem to be a far cry from the 83-point season he had in the OHL in 2013-14 at this point. He carried a reputation for not being in the best possible shape, but the Habs usually give their kids a few chances to make up for rookie mistakes, so maybe they saw something that made them shy away from him, or didn't have the patience to have him make his way up from the ECHL to the AHL to the NHL over a long stretch.

Here he is wearing the Spitfires' red uniform, from In The Game's 2012-13 Heroes And Prospects set (it's card #227 in the collection):

He signed it while finishing off the 2012-13 season with the Hamilton Bulldogs, in blue sharpie.