2007-2008 Upper Deck Artifacts Hockey

So the Thrashers start the season at 2-8 and they fire their coach. I figure hey, they suck, I can safely ignore them. I check the standings and they are somehow at .500 for the season. What the hell? Let's have some consistency, people. I really shouldn't have bothered with this pack, I didn't really want to mess with hockey cards this year. However, I've already opened a pack of baseball Artifacts (good), football Artifacts (bad) and basketball Artifacts (really good) so what the heck, let's go for the complete set. I'm interested to see what they look like anyway since the baseball and hoops sets had a dirt motif going on and ice and dirt don't really mix well. Besides, Bobby Orr is on the wrapper.

79 Alex Tanguay
16 Evgeni Malkin
82 Paul Stastny
74 Pavol Demitra
153 Jaroslav Halak Rookie #493/999

No dirty cards for Hockey. Upper Deck used an ice blue marble theme instead. These cards look really nice, but I just don't know who any of these people are. That probably means I no longer know a damn thing about hockey because according to the stats on the back, Malkin and Stastny scored 85 points and 78 points respectively last year. Tanguay also scored 80 points and Demitra (who rings a bell now that I think about it) is also a big goal scorer. It's ok if I don't know who the rookie is, I don't know who most of the baseball rookies are either and I actually follow that sport.

Since I have nothing to say about the players to pad out this post, I shall instead compare the team uniforms. The Canadians uni is classic, yet boring. I've never been a big fan of the CH logo. The Avs have a snazzy uniform but I always played the Red Wings in EA Hockey '94 so I feel compelled to hate them. The Penguins sweater kicks ass. I'm glad they went back to the old school cartoony penguin. I really like the Flames sweater with the red, yellow and black, but that flaming evil horse face logo sucks. The Wild uniform is disgusting, it looks like a Christmas nightmare. Red and Green just don't work for sports uniforms. Ask the New Jersey Devils, they changed their colors to red and black and immediately won a bunch of Stanley Cups. I don't think that will work for the Wild though, no matter what they do they'll still have the same name as the worst Disney flick ever. That movie managed to make Eddie Izzard unfunny, and I didn't think that was even possible. Ok, I'm completely off topic now.

To sum up: 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts baseball is good, football sucks, basketball is really good and hockey is also really good unless you don't follow hockey and then it sucks even if you pull a rookie goalie. Remember this, because there will be a quiz.