Hockey Card of the Day #33, 34

(Left) #20 - Rick Nash
07-08 Upper Deck Series 1

(Right) #275 - Rick Nash
07-08 Upper Deck Series 2

Rick Nash walking on, and off, the ice! If you would like to see more photos of the Columbus Blue Jackets not playing hockey, you may also want to check out card numbers 271, 274, and 276. Just because no one cheers for Columbus doesn't mean you can be lazy, Upper Deck.

Wish List #2

#GG-DC - Don Cherry Game Gear
00-01 Topps Stars

While this card is on my wish list, there's no denying that it is tackier than most of Cherry's suits. Every trading card company is dropping the ball when it comes to Don Cherry memorabilia cards. I hate to give away my great ideas but here's a freebie: make the suit in the photo an actual patch from one of his Hockey Night in Canada suits. Imagine getting this card with a small piece of authentic Don Cherry plaid. That'd be the hottest card since Gretzky-2000.

And while I'm giving away great ideas, I'd like a Ron MacLean memorabilia card with a patch from one of those old blue Hockey Night in Canada jackets like he's wearing in the video below, please.

Representatives from Upper Deck or In the Game can send job offers to bszine@hotmail.com. Anyone with this card or the Linden card from the last wish list post can send trade offers to the same address.

Free box of Upper Deck!

It's hard to believe that people would pay $72 for a box of these cards considering that the base set is worth nothing and most of the inserts aren't worth much more than that. I guess the point is to pull some exclusive hd-high gloss-parallel-autographed-game worn-rookie card and sell it on eBay for a pile of money. But if you don't get one of the few boxes that have those cards, then you're pretty much stuck with a pile of worthless cards. 07-08 is the new 91-92.

This box was free, so the price was right, and even though I already had the base set it was fun to open a box of hockey cards without the guilt of having spent a lot of money on it. One of the best things about this box was that out of the 192 cards in the box (24 eight-card packs) there wasn't a single double. Upper Deck was always the worst for that back in the 90's. The box of 93-94 Jumbo Packs that I opened recently was almost one-third duplicates, including quadruples of every Swede's favorite Belarusian, Alexander Andrijevski.

Out of my 192 cards, I got almost exactly what the box said I would: 172 base cards, including all the superstars like Sidney Crosby and Dan Cloutier; six Superstar insert cards, including Andrew Raycroft and Dwayne Roloson,'Hometown Heroes', Ryan Miller and Jarome Iginla, 'NHL's Best', Phil Kessel 'Award Winners' (the Masteron trophy is tied with the Lady Byng for lamest award in my books), and Scott Niedermayer's 'Lord Stanley's Heroes' card where it looks like he had to clip the bird shit out of his disgusting homeless-man beard; six Young Guns rookie cards-- I got some pretty marginal 'guns' in this batch-- Matt Niskanen, Ryan Callahan, David Krejci, Jared Boll, Daniel Winnik and Curtis McElhinney; Mark Stuart and David Legwand Game Jersey cards, and probably the only card actually worth more than a buck-- the 'Signature Sensations' Martin St.Louis autograph.

By my estimation, these cards are worth, at most, $35 if sold individually, which means I would have lost about $40 if I had purchased the box and was looking for a profit. I wish that Upper Deck would at least put enough cards in the box so you have the chance of getting the full base set when you buy a box. For $72 it's the least they could do, especially since it would only take one more card per pack.

All of these cards are up for trade. Make me offers of Pro-Set t-shirts, as well as weird and terrible hockey cards.

Hockey Card of the Day #31, 32

#326 - Jonathan Cheechoo
07-08 Upper Deck Series 2

San Jose vs. San Jose? Bullshit! They had half a season to get a photo of Cheechoo and they the use one from the team's intra-squad game.

#271 - Pascal Leclaire
07-08 Upper Deck Series 2

Why is it that Schwarzenneger gets to be in all the best hockey villain movie scenes?

04-05 Upper Deck All-World

I'm not sure why, but I really appreciate ugly and ridiculous hockey cards. Maybe it is because while everyone chases down the latest hot rookie card, I can be just as happy with a bottom of the barrel common card that makes me laugh (and saves me a lot of money). This is why Upper Deck's NHL lock-out year All-World set gets two thumbs up from me.

The set's 90 base cards mostly feature NHL players with their European teams, with a few former European-NHL stars thrown in as well. There are a lot of stars included in the set, but the real star of this set is the garish jerseys these guys are wearing-- some of which would even make race car drivers weep. Among the worst offenders are the Swiss National League's, SC Bern and Zug; the Czech Extraliga's HC Zlin and Pardubice (it is nice to see Kappa clothing on someone who is not trying to sell drugs to me at the bus stop) and Finnish SM-Liiga's Jokerit Helsinki (though to be fair this photo is from the 94-95 lock-out, not that it makes that collar any less ridiculous).

I know that European teams make most of their money from sponsorships, which explains why it looks like they have the yellow pages printed on their jerseys, but surprisingly the team with the highest payroll in Europe during the lock-out, Ak Bars Kazan of the Russian Super League, also had the best jerseys. These jerseys wouldn't even be bad for the NHL. It is definitely better than what Anaheim wears.

Five of my favourites:

#27 - Nikolai Khabibulin - Does he always look like this?

#44 - Borje Salming - This photo seems like it would have been from Salming's pre-NHL days, right? But all of his stats that I have found say that he only played for AIK Solna in the early-90's. Could they not afford good cameras, or is something wrong? European readers please let me know.

#55 - Hakaan Loob - He's missing his nice purple bow tie.

#78 - Joe Thornton - The best of the few action shots.

#87 - Igor Larionov - A classic jersey that will make you wish for the days of pre-capitalist European hockey.

07-08 Upper Deck Series 1

I don't feel like this set really needs a big write-up. All you really need to know is that there aren't nearly as many exciting action shots as the previous year's set, I don't like the skinny little bar at the bottom/side of the cards, but it is still a lot better than the new O-Pee-Chee set which is once again ugly. 07-08 Upper Deck is above average, but below great.

Five of my favourites:

#54 - Joe Sakic - Overhead shots are always stand-outs.

#79 - Steve Bernier - There should have been more cards like this.

#128 - Martin Biron - The one improvement over the previous year's set is the goalie cards. There are a lot more horizontal action shots, which are always the best.

#131 - Simon Gagne - I just noticed that all but one of the cards I pulled from the set as potential favourites are horizontal cards. They should just make the whole set like this.

#147 - Chris Phillips - I always like when I can see what the player is doing in the context of the play.

Hockey Card of the Day #25

#72 - Brian McFarlane
06-07 Parkhurst
(back)

Here is the highly sought after rookie card of the author of my second through fifth favorite books on hockey: It Happened in Hockey, More It Happened in Hockey, and Still More It Happened in Hockey. In case you are wondering, Ed Willes' The Rebel League, about the WHA's short but amazing history is my favourite book on hockey. When Ed Willes gets a hockey card, I will gladly pay up to 25 cents for it.

06-07 Fleer

It doesn't seem like Upper Deck is going to be releasing a Fleer set this year, which is too bad considering this was the second best set of 06-07, in my opinion (which is the correct opinion). I already said just about everything I have to say about this set in a previous post, but since I got the set off of eBay for next to nothing, I thought it deserved it's own post.

Upper Deck should have released these cards as their O-Pee-Chee set instead of the ugly brown cards that got the O-Pee-Chee brand name. Everything about the Fleer set is closer to the traditional look and feel of the O-Pee-Chee sets of the past except that the backs only have stats from the player's last five NHL season stats.

Five of my favourites:

#45 - Nikolai Khabibulin - Judging from what I can see of his face through his mask, he must be the world's ugliest dude.

#94 - Rob Blake - Since this was one of the first sets of the 07-08 season there weren't photos of some of the players with their current teams, so they either used a photo of the player with his previous team and put the current team's logo in the corner, or, in Rob Blake's case, they hired a handicapped person to hold up his new jersey for a photo.

#114 - Scott Hartnall - As much as I liked Nashville's gaudy third jerseys, it's about time they were put out of the NHL's misery.

#125 - Trent Hunter - This guy looks like he was drafted from the dark corner of one of those internet cafe's where you see people playing war games online 24 hours a day.

#154 - Sidney Crosby - Ever heard of him?

Worst Ever Hockey Cards #8

Worst Ever Hockey Card Set #8

#18 - Felix Potvin
01-02 Pacific Adrenaline - Power Play

Pacific's other insert sets featured players eating chicken mcnuggets and flaccid old-timers with boxes of viagra.

06-07 Upper Deck

I took my own advice from my post on 06-07 cards and bought the complete set of Upper Deck (both series') for $10. For some reason the rookies aren't counted as base cards even though they are numbered as part of the set, so I received cards 1 to 200 and 250 to 450. Having seen all the cards in the set now, I still think it's the best set of the year, and perhaps the last several years, but it's still far from a perfect set.

One of my biggest problems is the inappropriate use of the word 'score' in the blurbs on the backs of several cards. I'll use Brian Gionta's card as an example: ". . . his 24 power-play scores set a team record." Was that written by a four year old? Do the people at Upper Deck also say that a team won "three scores to two"? Probably not. Scoring is the action, goals are the results.

Other than Upper Deck's poor grammar, the first series is quite amazing. There are more action shots than I've seen in any other set, including net battles, body checks, slapshots, saves and goals. The second series, however, feels a lot more thrown together. Upper Deck would have had to move fast to get all the photos of players on their new teams in time to release the set before the season was over, and the quality suffers for it. Instead of action shots there are a lot more photos of guys just skating around, not doing much and goalies stretching. The lamest thing Upper Deck did was to include two Gretzky cards. It's not like these were special cards celebrating some special achievement, one is a checklist which might not have been too big of a deal, but the other is a regular card just like every other one in the set, except that the last stats shown are for the 98-99 season. Adding a retired superstar like that just so you can put his picture on the box and sell a few extra to people who don't know anything about hockey is the lamest gimmick I've seen since the terrible pre-NHL Eric Lindros cards in 91-92 Score.

Five of my favourites:

#32 - Darren McCarty - Two minutes for stupid facial hair and generally acting like a jackass.

#45 - Nikolai Khabibulin - This is a nice horizontal card with an interesting angle showing a glove save, but the real reason I like it is that it is the closest Anson Carter got to having a card. I know Carter didn't do much in Columbus or Carolina and he's out of a job now, but if his 33 goal season with Vancouver didn't earn him a card, didn't his hair?

#98 - Derek Boogaard - I read in an old Beckett that the NHLPA doesn't allow companies to use photos of players fighting. I think that's stupid. They can show goalies making saves, and players scoring, why can't they show fighters fighting? Look at this card-- they don't even give Boogaard a stick when he plays. He just runs around elbowing guys until someone fights him.

#104 - Andrei Markov - Frank Musil's little brother?

#181 - Mats Sundin - Living in Vancouver, where you can barely afford to sniff the air around GM Place when the Canucks are playing, it's hard to believe that in other NHL cities the seats are as empty as this.

You can watch a guy open a box of 06-07 Upper Deck on an internet show called Rip & Pull. I don't suggest it. It's just a chubby nerd opening packs of cards, but I wanted to point that out so I could post the video of a later episode where he gets a stripper named Dejah Vu to help him open a box of basketball cards. It's as embarrassing as it is depressing.



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05-06 Sunkist

Sets this bad don't get released every day. I'd expect that most ideas that are as terrible as this get nixed long before they find themselves being bent and creased in five-pound bags of oranges. But somehow, this Sunkist/Upper Deck NHL alumni set managed to squeak through to production without anyone stopping and saying, "these cards blow."

I don't even know where to begin with this set. Maybe I'll start by pointing out that the ugly orange border on the front of the card is actually the outside of an orange, and the back of the card has the inside of an orange as the background; the logos are all photoshopped out (which is always lame), and in the case of the Richard Brodeur card, you can still see the outline of the 'V' from the Canucks 80's 'flying V' logo; only four of the six players featured in the set could really be called stars-- as good as Wendel Clark and Richard Brodeur were at times in their career, they are far from hall-of-fame quality; the back of the card has more information about fruits and vegetables than it does about the player on the card; the cards are included in a bag of oranges!

I'd have to say the one redeeming thing about this set is the sweet Sunkist logo in the bottom right corner. If Sunkist made a set that was just fruits and vegetables playing hockey I'd be so stoked I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

Here are the three remaining cards from the set that I haven't already posted:

#3 - Yvan Cournoyer
#4 - Doug Gilmour - The only player not shown in the colours of a Canadian hockey team.
#5 - Dale Hawerchuk

06-07 Sunkist

If I gave an award for most improved set, Upper Deck/Sunkist would get it for their follow-up to the worst set ever produced. The back of the cards still has that ugly orange background, and more information about fruits and vegetables than the players, and the cards are still horribly cut, but other than that, the cards look pretty good. Of course, it helps that for '07, Sunkist shelled out for licensing from both the NHL and NHLPA so they could show current players and not have to photoshop out the team's logo. It's also helps that they decided against putting the same orange border on the front of the cards that they did the previous year because the ice background is actually appropriate. Unfortunately, the cards are still included in five-pound bags of oranges, so the chances of finding one that isn't bent in six different directions are slim.

Here are all ten 06-07 Sunkist cards:

#1 - Alex Kovalev
#2 - Jason Spezza
#3 - Mats Sundin
#4 - Jarome Iginla
#5 - Ryan Smyth
#6 - Marcus Naslund
#7 - Alexander Ovechkin
#8 - Vincent Lecavalier
#9 - Joe Thornton
#10 - Miikka Kiprusoff

06-07 Hockey Card Round-Up

By my count, Upper Deck released 30 different sets for the 06-07 season. Since I don't have the time or money to buy and write about each set, I am only going to cover the four affordable sets that I could find.

Upper Deck
Cost: $4/8 card pack

Easily the best set of the year. A nice simple, classy design plus lots of horizontal cards (five in my pack of eight cards) and lots of action shots. Probably my favorite set in the last ten years. Of course, like everything Upper Deck releases now, there are more subsets, inserts and game worn memorabilia cards than there are base cards. While that does make collecting the complete set from the pack difficult, it seems that there are lots of people who don't even want the base cards-- meaning you can buy the complete set off of eBay for about $10.

Best card from my pack: #143 - Robert Esche (back)

Fleer
Cost: $2/10 card pack

The more I look at and feel these cards, the more I like them. Fleer has that great rough cardboardy texture that I thought was extinct from hockey cards. While the photography in this set isn't particularly exciting, the cards aren't boring to look at either, and the fact that this set reminds me more of O-Pee-Chee than Upper Deck's O-Pee-Chee set earns it several bonus points. This is the closest anyone has gotten to the budget cards of the early-90's in a long time. Add five more cards to the packs, get rid of most of the inserts and drop the price of the full case to around $30, and this is a ten out of ten in my books.

Best card from my pack: #56 - Sergei Fedorov (back)

O-Pee-Chee
Cost: $1.50-2/6 card pack

Upper Deck really messed this one up. They took the most important brand in hockey card history, and instead of giving it a classic design deserving of its name, they farted out an ugly brown border and stamped the O-Pee-Chee logo on it five times bigger than it needed to be. I know that O-Pee-Chee's last set (92-93) was bad, but why did Upper Deck have to try to up the ante on ugly? The photography does manage to follow in the tradition of O-Pee-Chee cards: lots of close-up non-action shots. It's just too bad that that was the only point that they could get right. I suppose they did also make a simple, two colour back, but it's simple to the point of laziness. I can't think of any sets with backs that are more boring than this brown quadruple-spaced turd. They couldn't even be bothered to put in the right headings for the goalie stats. Pretty lame!

Best card from my packs: #419 - Vesa Toskala (back)

Victory
Cost: $2/6 card pack

I guess Upper Deck put all their effort into thinking of thousands of uncollectable subsets, so their actual sets were just thrown together when they needed something to package with their inserts. Victory is an uninspired set that looks like a second rate Score. Everything about these cards is unspectacular. Why is it necessary to have the big Victory logo behind the player when the logo is in the top left corner anyway?

Best card from my pack: #91 - Alexander Frolov (back)