I guess I had better get used to this

Namely, Daniel Alfredsson cards where he isn't sporting a Senators uniform.

At least the Detroit ones won't have more ads on them than NASCAR vehicles.

My first pack of 2013-14 Score Hockey

My LCS' hours didn't really jive with picking up a jumbo box before the weekend, but Target's hours start early enough to at least allow for a rack pack purchase. So, I did just that and picked one up. The previews looked promising in terms of photography, so I figured I'll be going for the base set.

52 cards. Let's dig in!

Bottom Portion

 #87 Jiri Tlusty -I always consider the first card I pull from any set an indication of how much I'll enjoy the set. Opening up with a celebration card is a good thing.
#73 Tim Jackman

 #11 Luca Sbisa  - A nice jostle along the boards card is always welcome instead of a generic skating, passing or shooting shot.
#60 Akim Aliu
#69 Cory Sarich

#117 Greg Zanon - There's a beard worthy of the Stanley Cup finals from a non-playoff team.
#162 Tom Wandell
#185 Shawn Horcoff
#199 Ed Jovanovski
#123 J-S Giguere
#267 Lars Eller
#238 Ryan Suter
#281 Jonathon Blum
#252 Jason Pominville

Team Score - TS3 Rick Nash - These are really nice. The design reminds me of the 1992-93 Dream Team cards, just with a more modern look to them. I'm assuming the background colours match the team's.

Gold Parallel - #465 Sami Salo

Red Parallel - #455 Jay Bouwmeester - My first two parallels. The way it works with the team colours and logo, but the red looks nicer than the gold. I do like the full colour border this year as opposed to the single stripe from last season on the gold.
#554 Flames Team Leaders
#377 Nicklas Grossman

#348 Craig Anderson - WOO-HOO! My first Sen! My first chance to post a horizontal card. I really don't like that the name and the 'Score' is still horizontal, but the fact that they use the team logo, and have it rotated properly, place the hockey usage of horizontal shots in the flagship ahead of the football release.

#391 Jason LaBarbera - CM Punk mask!

#362 Jim O'Brien And another Senator!

This is as good a place as any to post a scan of the back of one of the cards. Very bland, the two colours look like something you'd see decades ago. It's my only thumbs down from this pack break. There are apparently alternate backs, but it didn't appear that I pulled any of them.
#445 David Perron
#490 Jake Gardiner
#513 Derek Roy
#527 Jay Beagle

Top Portion

#83 Jeremy Welsh
#22 Milan Lucic

#38 Torey Krug. This was probably the best base card I pulled. At least in terms of costing beyond the cost of a common when set building. Hopefully, he doesn't end up being the 2013 Stanley Cup version of John Druce.
#105 Andrew Shaw
#207 Tomas Kopecky

#137 Nick Foligno - This is definitely the strangest of the base cards. Back to the camera shots are rarely a good choice for a card, but seeing the puck in behind Bernier makes up for it. Nick did pop a goal on 2/15 in Los Angeles, so it is a scoring play for the card's subject.
#195 Ryan Jones
#134 Brandon Dubinsky
#277 Patric Hornqvist
#286 Paul Gaustad
#300 David Clarkson
#239 Niklas Backstrom
#255 Tomas Plekanec

Gold Parallel - #481 Mikhail Grabovski

Red Parallel - #539 Blake Wheeler. Again, the red beats the gold in the aesthetic battle. And not just because the gold is a Leaf.

Hot Rookies - #630 Filip Forsberg. Here's what the rookie subsets look like this year. No fire motif this time, and at least the background isn't cut out for a generic background. I'm not too crazy about the text and shading at the bottom through. I always consider it a minor plus when the puck is visible.
#387 Mikkel Boedker
#396 David Moss

#410 Brandon Sutter - A great celebratory shot of someone I'll certainly look for a second card of for the 2/14 binder.

#349 Milan Michalek - And my third and final Senator from the pack. I'm thinking this will look positively garish in the red parallel.
#365 Sean Courtier
#451 Kris Russell
#500 Cory Schneider
#509 Maxim LaPierre
#523 Karl Alzner

#462 Ondrej Palat. I guess he wasn't hot enough to qualify as a hot rookie.

Having a great variety of pictures in a low end set is always good. It's the reason I elected to build last year's Score as opposed to the O-Pee-Chee. The photos pop nicely without any border separating them and the white border. The backs are my only real complaint. Very bland, but they are at least legible, and the numbers are all in the upper right corner, so it is easier for collation purposes.

Yup. It looks like I'll give this one a go.

Collector's Cache Box Break - Part 3

Time to put this Target purchase to bed as I work my way through the mixed cards from 92-93 onward.

As with yesterday's post, I'm leading with my favourite photo from this group. It's a desperation dive from Mike Richter to either prevent a goal, or cover up a bouncing puck. There aren't too many cards out there where neither the player, their skates or their stick is touching the ice.

Richter isn't the only card bound for the mask binder. These 6 will also move in. A nice variety of familiar names, and the not-so-familiar. Alfie Michaud played 2 total games. Philippe beat him with 3.

I pulled a card each of two of my favourite names in the NHL. J. J. Daigneault might not seem thaat spectacular, but his full name of Jean-Jacques Daigneault is a really fun one to say out loud. Try it, but do pretend you've taken a French class at least once in your life.

And the best name ever to be engraved on the Stanley Cup. There aren't enough people in sports named Jock. It's this card, and a card of ex CFLer Jock Climie in my collection. That's it.

He played three season out there, but it still seems strange seeing Randy Ladouceur sporting a Ducks jersey.

Non-NHL cards? There were a few of those as well! A Swedish card of one of hockey's most famous Swedes sporting the always good-looking 3 crowns uniform.

This is the second Tony Twist card that I've posted over the past few weeks. His autographs don't seem to be that expensive. I really should grab one off COMC or ebay at some point.
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Shiny! The Jeff O'Neill actually looks a lot brighter in person than on the scan. Zubov does seem a little less garish in person as well.

And to wrap it up, 6 new Sens for that binder. The Yashin would have been a decent pull back in the day. I wonder if Mike Milbury would be interested in swapping for it....

Collector's Cache Box Break - Part 2

So, 250 (or however many) mixed cards in the box are a lot to sift through. So, I'll  break it down into stuff from prior to 1992-93, which was a slight majority of them.

My favourite from this category? A referee card from Pro Set? Yup. The look on his face just screams "Don't I have linesmen to handle this?" as he separates Mike Peluso and, well...somebody else.  So, yes. A referee card is my favourite due to a unique picture and concept.

This was the oldest card in the batch. It had a couple year's lead over the the next closest - a trio of 1988-89s. Amazingly, I only have about a couple dozen from this year, but this card was one of them.

A pair of new additions to the 2-14 binder. I'd already had the Poddubny card in my Rangers alumni collection, so now I have a home for the second one.

Another hockey variant of a Dime Box Nick mini-collection. Odds I'll remember I have this one before I send out my next PWE? Let's put it at even odds. I love the fact that it is just a random autograph book that he's signing, not a traditional thing like a card, a stick or a jersey.

Any appearance of Lord Stanley is great. It's nice on the Mario. Ir's even nicer on the card of a fairly obscure player like Jim Paek. Although if you avidly follow the career of Koreans in the NHL, he's not so obscure.

Junk wax era or not - pulling a Gretzky is always great.

And another one of these oddball cards from the Arena Holograms Draft Picks special edition set.

Cards from this era mean one thing - Mullets! Rob Brown look is especially sleazy. He looks about one step away from being the type of guy who would buy beer for teenage puck bunnies who think his hair is just, like, yaknow, the awesomest thing.

And to wrap this up, some 7th Inning Sketch cards. Derek Eberle is, before you ask, related to related to Jordan. They're cousins. The Checklist card might have been a good pull at the time. Yanic Perreault did get a lot a hype at the time.

The best thing about snagging this autograph...

of A's pitcher Brett Anderson was that I was inspired to start following him on twitter.

This morning, he gives this gem:

Thank you, Brett Anderson, for making us laugh about love. Again

Delgado Day!

I know I said I was going to work my way through the 250 assorted hockey cards in the cache, but today is a special day for one of my favourite players. Carlos Delgado's name will join the Level of Excellence at the Skydome.

So, I'm going to highlight my 10 favourite cards in my Delgado binder.

I'm going chronologically, and this 1991 issue is the earliest one in my collection. The cap logo looks like something from the local cable access channel instead of one for a baseball club.

Not just one of my favourite players on the card, but two of them? Awesome!

I love the early cards of Delgado where he still is a catcher, and appears with the tools of ignorance.

Still listed in positions other than the one he'd eventually settle into.

Rocking the Canada Day red jerseys. These don't make enough appearances on cards.

A little different entry. Not a standard pose or a slugging shot - just a fun gameday photo.

You'd think a former catcher like Carlos would have more respect for his brethren. I tried to work out who was getting splattered. Blue uniform, and #2 visible on the helmet. I think it would be Brent Mayne, who wore #2 for the Royals in 2003.

I don't know where this one falls in the chronology of cards, but it has to be one of the first ones since his move to the Mets.  Either way, it is a great photograph. Visible ball. Visible catcher. The tarp. The ballboy. The crowd. So much of the little things at the stadium.

My second card that commemorates an arse-whipping he helped lay on the Yankees. Although why they are using a defensive play for a card that salutes offensive output is beyond me.

And finally, a dual relic that salutes his time on my two favourite teams.

Collector's Cache Box Break - Part 1

As Target continues its move into Canada, the third store in my nearby vicinity opened up this week. I've never been a "Day 1" type person, so I swung by to take a look at the card aisle. It's about the same size as the first, and a little larger than the second.

I had seen the Collector's Cache baseball being busted at several sites, but had yet to see any hockey show up. So, why not try one?

Here's the contents. The case itself will be just the right size to store my Flagship from this season after Update, and I'd still have room in there for some inserts. I'm already interested.

I'll get to all the loose cards, both regular and oversized, tomorrow (hope you like 1990 Bowman!), and focus on the rest.

As pictured on the box, the team set was the Capitals one. The packs were 06-07 and 09-10 OPC, 1998 Pinnacle Mint, and the autograph pack was 1997-98 Pinnacle Be A Player.

As for the rest, reverse-chronological order!

A nice start. A pair of mask binder cards, with one being a retro.

This pack, on the other hand, was not so impressive. The JSG double-ducks mask is always nice, but this is still pretty bland. For the rookie, Ben spent much of his time in Toronto bouncing between the parent club and the Marlies.

With a 30 card set, you shouldn't have too many problems pulling an impressive 3 pack. These certainly qualify. The silver parallels fall at about a 1:23 rate, so I beat the odds there.

As for the coin?

Some guy named Gretzky.

Finally, the Be a Player, with an autograph guaranteed. But first, the base:

A couple pretty well-known netminders, a couple veterans, and a couple "Who was he?". Pretty much what I expected.

And the auto?

AWESOME! One of my favourite names in hockey history, and by far the best player even with a double zed for his initials. It's a die-cut variant as well