Scottie Pippen Game-Used Floor Card

Like the Karl Malone card I posted about in February, this Scottie Pippen card incorporates an authentic piece of floorboard from an NBA game.

Sure, he's wearing a Portland Trail Blazers uniform, but it's still the man who made the playoffs sixteen straight times, made the NBA All-Defensive Team 8 times, the All-NBA first team three times, a seven-time all Star (and once All Star Game MVP in 1994), and six-time NBA champion with the Chicago Bulls - in two separate three-peats, the second one being the most memorable to me, not so much because of Michael Jordan's apport to the team, but Dennis Rodman's.

The card (#SP) is from the 2001-02 SP Game Floor Edition, by Upper Deck.

Chris Pronger Jersey Card

It could end tonight. The Stanley Cup could be awarded to the Chicago Blackhawks. Or the Philadelphia Flyers could keep making this a ''homers' series'' and take it to gave 7.

For that to happen, though, you'd need a monster performance by Chris Pronger, seen here wearing the Edmonton Oilers' home jersey in their Cup run the only season he played there, when they lost it to the Carolina Hurricanes partly due to an injury to Dwayne Roloson. I'm one of those who think Pronger would have won the Conn Smythe had the Oilers won; he was just that good. I had never liked him before, but wanted him on my team ever since. On the other hand, had I been on the Oilers' coaching staff, I would have had the players wear the alternate jersey at least once in the finals, to change the mood.

Pronger won the Cup the next season with the Anaheim Ducks, so he got his, but I have the sneaking suspicion that if the Flyers won it this year, he'd get Conn Smythe consideration again, as he and Claude Giroux are probably the main reasons why they have made it so far.

This card (#FF-CP) is from Upper Deck's 2005-06 Ice set, the Frozen Fabrics insert sub-set. As always, the Ice set delivers beautiful cards, and this one has a game-worn piece of jersey on its front to boot; it retails between $35-50. Great stuff!

Three Curtis Sanford Autographed Cards

For most of his career, Curtis Sanford went by the nickname ''The Sandman''; when the Vancouver Canucks got him to change it to ''The Big C.S.'' - which doesn't even make sense considering his 5'10'', 190-lb frame - it's like he became more and more prone to injury, which is ironic in itself, considering he went undrafted and got his big break playing for the St. Louis Blues when their 3 other goalies (Brent Johnson, Fred Brathwaite, and Reinhard Divis) all fell to injury in the 2002-03 season.

He played well enough to earn the #1 goalie spot for a while, though, at times playing better than Patrick Lalime, at times sharing duties with Manny Legace. He was even named the NHL's Player Of The Week for the week of November 14th, 2005. But injuries became a recurring theme, and the Blues let him go to free agency; as is often the case with Blues netminders, he was relegated to backup duty when the Canucks signed him, but filled in admirably each time Roberto Luongo went down, including stopping 35 of 36 shots (good for a second star nod) in his first win for Vancouver.

Unfortunately, the acquisitions of Jason LaBarbera and Andrew Raycroft by the Canucks pretty much showed him the door, and he signed with the Montréal Canadiens' organization for the 2009-10 season, who sent him to their AHL affiliate Hamilton Bulldogs to start the season, one thinks before they settled on which goalie to trade between Jaroslav Halak and Carey Price, with GM Bob Gainey leaning towards sending Halak away.

Well, Price choked got unlucky breaks, Halak got hot enough to not only save the Habs' season but played like a playoff MVP, and Sanford again battled through injuries in mid-season, enabling youngster Cédric Desjardins to play enough (and well enough) to go to the AHL All Star game.

With his luck, Sanford should go ahead and get himself a black cat and start walking under ladders, because it can't get much worse!

These three cards were sent with a fan letter to the Bulldogs' home arena (Copps Coliseum) on March 20th, and received back this morning, May 25th, signed with a black sharpie that is on the brink of dying and with his jersey number (#1) at the end, despite his number being 41 with the Canucks.

The card on the top-left is his rookie card from the 2002-03 Topps Total set by Topps (card #438, from a pack I purchased at a dollar store back in the day!), wearing the Blues' white uniform, getting ready for action coming his way. The card on the bottom also sees him in his Blues whites, this time catching the puck in his glove to freeze play on a beautiful, horizontal 2006-07 Upper Deck Series 1 card (#170), while the card on the top-right sees him sporting the horrible blue/green Canucks home jerseys reminiscent of their first NHL jerseys - I strongly prefer the late-80s black jerseys and the stylized-skate logo; it's taken from Upper Deck's 2008-09 Series 1 set.

Darryl Sydor Autographed Card

In the early 1990s, the Los Angeles Kings had a pair of defensemen they thought would share the first pairing for a long time and would bring them playoff success, perhaps even a Stanley Cup. On the right side, drafted 70th overall in 1988, Rob Blake, who would go on to captain the team for 12 seasons, participate in 6 All Star games and 3 winter Olympics (one gold medal in 2002), earn a Norris trophy (1998), and eventually win the Cup with the Colorado Avalanche. On the left side, chosen 7th overall in 1990, winner of two Stanley Cups (with the Dallas Stars in 1999 and the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004), Darryl Sydor.

One of them was a star player for most of his career, while the other accepted to be relegated to 'role player' status for the better good of the team. Thusly, only Blake choked in the playoffs with a star-studded San Jose Sharks team for the past two seasons, and this year while captaining the team.

Sydor had a promising junior career, winning the Memorial Cup with the Kamloops Blazers, registering 95 and 105 points, respectively, in his final two complete seasons with the team. As a defenseman.

This is one of Sydor's rookie cards, from the 1991-92 O-Pee-Chee Premier set (card #90), by Topps. It's sort of an action shot, taken during a pre-game skate (you can see another King doing nothing at the blue line behind him) in which he's wearing my favourite Kings' home jersey of all time, and #40 - numbers in the 40s were usually reserved for rookies or players not expected to make the team; he would settle on #25 for the rest of his tenure with the Kings, starting in 1992-93. I got him to sign it in black sharpie during the Lightning's 2004 Cup run, when they sweeped the Montréal Canadiens in the second round.

Blaine Stoughton Autographed Card

The 70s and 80s in the NHL was a prime era for mustached men who could seemingly fly over the iced surface. I touched upon Michel Goulet's accomplishments here and here, but Goulet had to compete against behemoths of offensive production in the middle of the Gretzly-era Oilers and high-scoring 80s, so while he was always invited to All Star games and Rendez-Vous 87, he never won a scoring title.

Blaine Stoughton did. In the NHL, too, not the WHA (he played for the Whalers in both). It was the 1979-80 season, a season in which the Philadelphia Flyers went 35 games without losing a single game, in which Wayne Gretzky and Marcel Dionne tied for the league lead with 137 points but Dionne got the Art Ross trophy for having scored more goals, while Gretzky scored the Hart; despite being a rookie, Gretzky wasn't allowed to win the Calder trophy for having previously played in the WHA. It was also the season where wearing a helmet became mandatory in the NHL.

But back to Stoughton: he scored 56 goals that year, to lead the league, tied with the Los Angeles Kings' Charlie Simmer. Unfortunately for them, the Rocket Richard trophy was not yet in place, so they didn't win any hardware for their feat.

In less politically correct times, he was also on a line called the ''LSD Line'' with Rick Dudley and Rich Leduc, for the Cincinnati Stingers. More importantly, though, he played his junior career with the Flin Flon Bombers, in Manitoba. Flin Flon, yes. One of Canada's best names for towns, with Medecine Hat and Thunder Bay. He was inducted into the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame, where he shared the spotlight with such legends as Terry Sawchuk, Bryan Hextall, Andy Bathgate and Bobby Clarke.

And to think he was drafted by the Québec Nordiques in the WHA draft... would have made for some interesting early 80s!

This card was originally purchased with hundreds of others at a flea market, in a grab-bag of old cards; it's a 1981-82 O-Pee-Chee card (by Topps, card #132) and shows him wearing the Hartford Whalers' first away jersey in the NHL; I had no idea who this guy was, but I liked his mustache and thought the jersey looked retro (I was used to the late-80s improved version). Years later, in 2005, I went to a card convention in Toronto and he was a guest signer, and I knew I'd seen his name somewhere before... so I looked through all my cards and found it. His line was one of the shortest (barely 15 minutes of wait time when, say, Darryl Sittler had over 3 hours), and most people didn't even have a picture or card for him to sign, he was just signing 3x5 blank pieces of cardboard... I was glad I had the card. In all honesty, though, I'd gone to the thing for Cam Neely, who was there for his Hall of Fame induction, but his line-up was way too long and I didn't bother. Plus, I only had a Panini sticker for him to sign. And he was a former Bruin. And he didn't have facial hair. No regrets!