Rodney Carney Autograph Card

Here's a card I got in a multi-sport repack years ago:

It's card #142 from Upper Deck's 2006-07 Hardcourt set (part of the Hardcourt Futures subset) and features a blue-sharpied on-card autograph of Rodney Carney, pictured wearing a suit.

He was originally drafted 16th overall by the Chicago Bulls in 2006 but was quickly sent to the Philadelphia 76ers for the player they'd just picked 13th overall (Thabo Sefolosha) and a second-round pick from the following season.

After a decent game in which he scored 25 points and registered 8 rebounds in his rookie season, becoming the first Sixer to accomplish the feat since Allen Iverson, the team decided to trade Iverson and replace him with Carney, which even someone who knows as little about basketball as I do will tell you was the wrong decision.

No offense, but trading a known All-Star-caliber commodity just to make room for an unproven asset rarely makes sense, regardless of the sport, unless money or attitude also factor in.

Nowadays, Carney plays in the Dominican Republic (for the La Vega Reales), after stints in Venezuela (Caracas Cocodrilos), the Philippines (Talk 'N' Text Tropang Texters - no joke), Lebanon (Beirut Sporting Al Riyadi), and Turkey (Antalya Büyükşehir Belediyesi). In the NBA, he has played for the Sixers twice, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Golden State Warriors, the Miami Heat and the New Orleans Pelicans.

Alex Galchenyuk Autograph And Swatch Folding Card

Nice way to start off the NHL season, as the Montréal Canadiens' young winger center Alex Galchenyuk scored the winning goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Playing behind Tomas Plekanec will relieve him of a lot of pressure - including playing against the opposition's top line - and having Alexander Semin as a winger will give him more space to maneuver, as opponents won't be sure if he'll be shooting or passing and will respect him a bit more than they did last year, when he was usually stripped of the puck with two adversaries directly on him as soon as he approached the other team's zone.

And should the Semin experiment fail, I'm fairly certain Michel Therrien will pair him with Max Pacioretty, so as to give him every possible chance at succeeding as a center.

I participated in a raffle last summer in which I won the following card after purchasing five of a possible 20 spots:

Inside/Front

Back/Front

As you can see, it is a fold-up card containing both an autograph on a clear sheet of plastic inserted in the card on one side, and an event-worn swatch on the other, with pictures from both his draft day (he went third overall in 2012) where he's pictured in the Habs' classic red jersey, and an action shot where he's wearing the white (now-away) uniform.

It's card #FR-AG from Panini's 2013-14 Playbook set (part of the Dual Rookie Class and First Round Edition sub-sets); apparently, it's already worth north of $60 on the open market.

Daniel Lacroix Autographed Card

Daniel Lacroix had plans, hopes and dreams for his post-hockey career; he was interested in photography, drawing and sculpting. He liked baseball, particularly the Montréal Expos. His favourite movie was Cyrano De Bergerac, starring Gérard Depardieu, and - like most Montrealers born in the 1960s - his favourite player growing up was Guy Lafleur.

His active NHL career went from 1993 until 1998, during which he played 188 regular-season games with five different teams: 30 with the New York Rangers who had drafted him in the second round (31st overall) in 1987, 23 with the Boston Bruins, 130 with the Philadelphia Flyers, 4 with the Edmonton Oilers and his final game with the New York Islanders. He scored 11 goals and had 7 assists for a total of 18 points, with 379 penalty minutes over that span.

Unfortunately, those weren't great teams, so he only appeared in the postseason twice with the mid-1990s Flyers, suiting up for 12 games in 1996-97 and 4 more the following season (with one assist to show for it).

Instead of following his career with artistic endeavours, however, he became an assistant coach, first with the Moncton Wildcats behind Ted Nolan in the LHJMQ, then following Guy Boucher first with the Hamilton Bulldogs, then with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

He joined the Montréal Canadiens in the same capacity for the 2014-15 season, and was given powerplay duties; when that failed, the team traded his tasks with those of Jean-Jacques Daigneault this past summer, and he will handle the penalty kill this year instead.

We'll see how that pans out.

In the meantime, here's a souvenir from his days with the Flyers, sporting their 1980s and 1990s white (then-home) uniform, from Pinnacle's 1996-97 Be A Player set (it's card #135 in the collection), which he signed in fading black sharpie last year, with his jersey number (32) tagged at the end:

I have nothing against the Flyers' current/retro uniforms, but these were also dear to me, having been worn throughout my childhood.

Garth Snow Autograph Card

I featured Garth Snow a couple of years ago as he'd done a fairly decent job of keeping the New York Islanders afloat as their general manager in what can now be qualified as ''despite owner Charles Wang'' who, it turns out, was the main reason why the Isles were caught with ridiculously long-term and expensive contracts.

He first brought trusted veterans to the fold (Bill Guerin, Doug Weight, Ryan Smyth, Mark Streit, Lubomir Vishnovsky, and Evgeni Nabokov), drafted well (John Tavares, Brock Nelson, Griffin Reinhart), stockpiled draft picks, then took advantage of other teams' binds to acquire the core pieces of the back end that he so sorely needed: goalie Jaroslav Halak, and defensemen Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuk.

He's been savvy and he's been gutsy, particularly when he traded for Thomas Vanek in the hopes that he would like playing with Tavares enough that he'd sign with the team. But he was like that when he played too, always using his brain to get an edge over the opposition, whether it was through trash-talking or modifying his equipment (as mentioned in my previous post).

He's played for Team USA twice, at the 1994 Olympics and the 1998 World Championships.

Here he is with the Vancouver Canucks, on card #144 from In The Game's 1998-99 Be A Player set (the gold variant of the signed insert sub-set):

On it, he's wearing the team's turn-of-the-millennium white (home) uniform, which I strongly preferred to what they currently wear. The card itself is signed in thin black sharpie.

I'm also a fan of the mullet he's sporting on the back of the card:

And to think, he and Tim Thomas were Québec Nordiques draft picks...

Two Raffi Torres Jersey Cards

Oops, he did it again...

After missing most of the last two seasons with ACL issues, Raffi Torres hit Jakob Silfverberg in the head and has been suspended indefinitely pending a hearing; he declined an in-person hearing, meaning he will probably face upwards of 5 games as a repeat offender. Here's a video of the hit in question:

I, for one, think he absolutely intended to rock Silfverberg and knock him on his ass with a huge hit to impress his coaches and show the team that a year off hasn't deterred him from being able to play a physical game; I don't think he intended on giving the Anaheim Ducks rising star an elbow to the head, but that in the thick of the action and as Silfverberg got rid of the puck and attempted to protect himself by dodging the hit, Torres' reflexes got the best of him. Notice he had to swerve to avoid a Duck on his way to him...

A lot of people no longer give him the benefit of the doubt and are not only calling for a long suspension, but many are also clamoring for a ban from the NHL; I'm not jumping on that bandwagon, but it's getting harder and harder to convince people to give him another chance, especially since he's had four or five ''second chances'' already.

The guy can play hockey; he's had two 20-goal seasons (with a high of 27 post-lockout in 2005-06) and four more of 15 and more; he's had 30 or more points four times. He's coming back from a very severe injury. You hope he can make it work. He just can't seem to put himself in a position where that's possible, and that's too bad.

Here he is in happier days, with the Edmonton Oilers, wearing the team's turn-of-the-millennium white (then-home) uniform, twice:

Both cards are from the eponymous flagship Upper Deck sets, the top card being from the 2005-06 Series 1 collection (card #J-RT) with a matching white game-worn jersey swatch, while the one at the bottom is from the 2005-06 Series 2 set (#J2-RT), with a bright orange swatch.

Notice how his facial hair changed - and the cool Oilers' 25th Anniversary patch on the first one.