Hockey Week - 2006-07 Upper Deck Power Play

Hockey season starts today! Ok, it's not starting in America, but the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning are opening up the NHL Season with a couple of games in Prague. There's two other games being played in Europe too up in Norway or something but I can't remember who's playing and I'm too lazy too look it up so forget about Norway. PRAGUE IS THE PLACE TO BE! There are pretty buildings and a thriving technology center and beer strong enough to strip paint and according to a show I watched on G4 at three in the morning a robust sex tourism industry. You can Google that last one yourself, I don't want that in my browser history. Anyway, the Czech Republic rules and is as good a place as any to start up the NHL season. Thrashers' #1 pick ever Patrik Stefan is from the Czech Republic, so you know it's a hell of a hockey region if they knew enough to get his no scoring ass out of the country. So to honor the start of a new Hockey season, I bought this thing:

Five packs for five bucks. AND a rookie card! Can't beat that with a broken hockey stick. I now have hockey packs to rip all week which will thrill all three readers who love hockey and bore the crap out of everyone else. All you other people can go watch playoffs or the NFL or something! It's time for Hockey!! First pack is a 2006 Upper Deck Power Play, which I have never heard of before in my life. A brand new experience for a brand new season.

81 Mark-Andre Fleury
38 Pavel Datsyuk
44 Todd Bertuzzi
15 Jarome Iginla
51 Pavol Demitra
GR1 Jean-Sebastien Giguere Goal Robbers

Not one, but TWO goalies with hyphenated first names in this pack. Be still my beating heart. One is a neat looking insert card of J.S. Giguere with a really stupid name: Goal Robbers. Goalies don't rob goals. They are supposed to protect the goal, not skate off with the thing. It has the old duck shaped hockey mask logo on the sweater though instead of that crappy new logo so I'll let the dumb name slide. Lotsa gold on these cards. There's a gold swoosh on the bottom and more gold in the background on top and lots of gold on the back with more swooshes and the photo from the front completely in gold. At least the foil is silver to break up the monotony. Pretty good pack here, two goalies, two Lady Byng trophy winners, a guy who punched another guy in the back of the head and the best card in the pack: Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla. Elvis is Everywhere! Not only is Jarome a great player who sort of resembles Dave Lister from Red Dwarf, but he's wearing the cool alternate Calgary uniform featuring the devil horse with flaming snots. I never realized that Canadian horses sneezed fire. No wonder mounties are so fucking bad-ass. Here's the back of Pavel's card:


Kinda boring, especially the gold reprise of the photo on the front. Only five years of stats, lame factoids and no biographical information so you don't know if they were born in Moose Jaw or Winnipeg. Pretty weak if you ask me. The only saving grace is that there are pronunciation guides for everyone's name. So now you can pronounce Pavel Datsyuk properly and quit saying PAY- vl Dots-eye-OOK like some non-hockey knowing goofball.