1st pack
Pack 2
Pack 3
wow. Good luck trying to put this set together.....
Apparently it's Thanksgiving in Canada (no, really!), so here's a Canadian thing I'm thankful for: Old Hockey Cards. I don't have an old hockey pack to open though so here's a pack of 2008 Legends Masterpieces. Apparently Upper Deck couldn't decide whether to do a legends set or a masterpieces set so the squooshed them together. It's like the Reese's peanut butter cup of Hockey cards. I recently bought a handful of packs, here's the best of the bunch.
Sweet looking card of St. Patrick. The backs of these cars look good too with a reddish wood grain sorta thing going on. A really cool thing that Upper deck did with these cards is they list the artist they commissioned for the painting on the back. Roy was done by Gardner. It would have been cooler had they listed the artist's first name too.
Did someone trademark Gordie Howe's name so he couldn't use it any more? His Goudey card says Mr. Hockey too. He should be Mr. Pucky 'cause he sure does have a lot of them. The atrist here is R. Adair. At least I got an initial on this one.
Don't be fooled by this card, it's an ad not an auto. Evgeni Malkin apparenty signes using his left foot. I got two of these in my 6 packs, why couldn't they put a few different players on each ad? Companies used to do that sort of thing back in the early 2000s before half a dozen manufacturers went kaputt.
Yeah, a jersey! The blue swatch confused me a bit until I checked the back. This is from an Oilers jersey, not a Kings jersey. I'm cool with that, they were nice enough to tell me at least. Here's something else nifty I recently discovered. If you look up a player's stats on HockeyDB.com, you can click on a page that shows a list of their cards. That's pretty cool if you're a hockey collector!
The Ranger star is apprehensively holding a very dangerous looking trophy. That silver Leaf looks razor sharp. Be careful Brian! This one was painted by Ron Stark. The way things are going, I'll get the artist's middle name or social security number on the next card!
I missed a day earlier this week so I'll combine the Bee Hive pack and the bonus rookie card in one post for the opening night (American version) for the NHL. I ripped a pack of Bee Hive last year and liked it. I regret now not buying the blaster when I had the chance. I got a second pack of it in this box, let's take a look.
Another rookie card, nice. That's two-for-two for me in Bee Hive. I got my second (or maybe third?) Giguere card which is annoying because I keep misspelling his name. Koivu's good... Spezza's good... my favorite part of these cards though is the back. They are cluttered, they have a lot of wasted space and the faux-retro is really cheesy. But they use something like ten different fonts on the backs! It's like a kid first figuring out the Font function in Microsoft Word and trying to use every font they can find. I'm surprised UD didn't use Wing Dings on the card. Could you imagine sorting a set where Wing Dings was used for the card number? In honor of these epic backs, I'm going to post a few "Did You Know? factoids from them. 
Spezza: Bobby Carpenter was the first American-born player to post 50 goals in a season (1984-85).
Woohoo. a plain white envelope. That is surprisingly see-through when you scan it. No other protection banging around in there with all those packs. Let's open it:
1990 Bowman #7 Eddie Belfour!!!
Voici le quatrième paquet hors de cette boîte, et vous la croire ? C'est une édition en français ! Je ne peux pas parler français du tout ! Je ne pourrais pas même parvenir à commander un certain poutine quand j'étais des vacances à Montréal. Cet échec me hantera pour le reste de ma vie, je le savent juste. Quoi qu'il en soit, puisque j'ai obtenu un paquet français de 91-92 pro hockey d'ensemble je vais employer Babelfish pour traduire le poteau en français mutilé. Appréciez !
40 Jeremy Roenick
WOUAH ! C'est un grand paquet même si il est en français. Début de deux Joe Sakics lui au loin, une base et une toute la carte d'étoile. Il y a un groupe de bons défenseurs dedans là comme Phil Housely, office de Gary et Paul Cavallini. Vous devez aimer les joueurs de Whaler de Hartford et John Cullen et Brad Shaw fournissent des exemples des chandails à la maison et partis impressionnants. Le Blackhawks était l'une de mes équipes quand j'ai joué NHL '94 d'EA, et j'ai marqué de nombreux buts avec Graham et Roenick. Le gardien de but Jeff Hackett semble être un draft pick d'expansion des requins tous neufs de San Jose. Il y a une vieille carte fraîche de timey de Bill Barilko, mais je ne peux pas lire le dos ainsi je ne sais pas ce qui continue là. Il ressemble à quelqu'un sur les feuilles juste marquées. Le meilleur est sauvé pour le bout. Paul Coffey est mon joueur préféré absolu dont les initiales ne sont pas des CC. Cette carte le montre jouant pour les pingouins de Pittsburgh de champion tout en portant certaine d'une garde de visage étrange. Autre que cette carte de cerise de Don, ce sont certaines des meilleures cartes hors de la boîte ! Apportez sur des cartes plus françaises !
Dirk a une moustache d'âne de coup-de-pied!
In 1991, the brand was brought back as a zombie product for Pro Set who used contemporary players in a kinda sorta 'premium' design. Pro Set went bust after a couple of years and the brand transferred to Upper Deck who used it for contemporary and retro sets. UD lost the license and it bounced around for a while between Parkhurst Products, Inc, In the Game and finally settled back with UD, who pretty much own hockey right now. Here's a pack of the stuff from '06-'07 with Bobby Orr on the front. I've never opened a pack of this stuff and the "collect autograph cards of the entire Parkhurst base set" line on the pack intrigues me.
Ok, the Don Cherry card has got to be the most fantastic thing ever. What the hell is that... a plaid duster? Sheer brilliance whatever it is. Stuff like that makes me regret I'm not Canadian. This set kind of looks like a hockey version of Fleer Greats of the Game. Lots of legends and autographs. No autos here but some decent vintage players at least. I got another two goalie pack with Bruins Hall of Famer Gerry Cheevers and Red Wing goalie I've never heard of Jim Rutherford. Apparently Jim was the GM for the cup winning Carolina Hurricanes, good for him. Cheever's card is pretty cool for the sweet mask with his trademark stitches painted on. He's also got about two cows worth of padding between the gloves and those blockers. There's another Hall of Famer in Jean Beliveau, a 500 goal scorer for Montreal. The dude has a trophy named after him so you know he's good. Here's Jean scoring a goal in game 7 of the 1965 Cup Finals:
The Rangers swept the Lightning in Prague (good for my Thrashers) and Ottawa and Pittsburgh split in Sweden. I said Norway in the last post. My bad. The real season kicks off on Thursday (I think) but I have plenty of hockey wax to rip before then. Here's the second pack from my plastic hockey rookie+packs thingy: 1990 Pro Set. This colorful set, like everything else in the early '90s, was overproduced to hell and as a result we can rip it to our hearts content. We'll be ripping this stuff long after the oil has run dry, the banks have all failed and the governments have all collapsed. Won't that be a wonderful day! Just us and our cases of '90 Pro Set, ripping happily as Western Civilization burns all around us. Let's open.
Much much better than the slug. My guess is the team will one day move to Helena, Montana and rename themselves the Buffaloes.
Anybody remember the old red and green sweaters? Looks more like Santa than Satan. They won all their cups after changing to red & black which goes to show that evil always wins.
Ok, not technically in Canada, but close enough. The North Stars ditched the north and moved to Dallas while Minnesota watered down the NHL even further with a new team named after the most wretched animated film ever. The logo is nifty and scientific, as the N points to what is presumably Polaris.
Seriously, what the hell is a Nordique? Northerners? Really? Pretty much every person in Canada is a Northerner to everyone except polar bears. I have never been able to explain the symbolism in this logo, and I've got an English degree, so I'm practically a professional bullshitter. Well, there's an N, I think, and a hockey stick and somehow a puck balanced perfectly on the edge and it's supposed to look like... um, half a Zamboni.. or maybe a fat guy with no head or arms playing hockey... er, oh hell, I don't know. This logo was definitely made in the '70s and you know what kind of stuff they smoked back then.
Now this is a kick ass logo! Lotsa kinetic energy, and a hockey stick and a little jet going WHOOSH! There's a great history of jets in Winnipeg including a famous mishap, so it's a topical name too. I still can't believe they took this team away from people who could appreciate it and moved them to the desert. Weak. Move a team back up there, NHL! You can have the Thrashers if you want, no one'll miss em.
Since you read this far, you get 10cents off your next imaginary purchase from Pro Set. Don't spend that money all in one place!
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
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:
They try and build you up on the wrapper. Memorabilia! Autographs! Rookies! Vintage!
1993/94 Classic Draft Picks Denis Metlyuk. Denis spent one year in Hershey, and the rest in Mother Russia. A high 2nd round pick wasted on this never was by Philadelphia.
1993/94 Upper Deck Pat Elynuik. Pat played 4 years for the Winnipeg Jets.... and that's all I got.
1991/92 Pro Set Robert Reichel - a Flame! Robert won an Olympic gold medal... and is still playing in Europe.
1990/91 Score Canadian Memorial Cup Champions tribute.
This was a cheap ploy to add yet another card of Eric Lindros in their set. That's Eric Lindros. Anyone? Bueller? Think Akili Smith. Todd VanPoppel. You get the idea.
1989/90 OPC Bill Ranford.
Not exactly a Patrick Roy RC... in fact, not even a Bill Ranford RC....
Okay. So it sucked big time. What did you expect ? A '52 Parkie of Gordie Howe?
