AHL news & sports card news

so, I noted a while ago that Oklahoma City was going to get an American Hockey League franchise next year, and the Edmonton Oilers would use it as their affiliate, instead of the Springfield (Mass.) Falcons. what would happen to the Falcons? and why didn't the Anaheim Ducks have an AHL franchise? (it's been 29 AHL, 30 NHL teams this year). today: mysteries solved! the Syracuse Crunch will switch their affiliation from Columbus Blue Jackets to Anaheim, and Columbus will switch its affiliation to Springfield. Dark Blue Jacket, a CBJ blog I found rather late in the season and recently blogrolled, posted "Goodbye Syracuse"; and there's now an updated list by Scotty Wazz of the distance between each NHL team and its AHL affiliate.

other AHL news--I forgot to include the following in the previous "congratulations" post. last Friday, 3/19, vs the Rochester Americans, Binghamton Senators goalie Chris Holt became the 10th goaltender in the AHL's 74-year history to be credited with scoring a goal (the last instance was Drew MacIntyre of the Manitoba Moose, and now the Chicago Wolves...scoring against the Wolves)! I love seeing the goalie get patted on the head even before the game is over...



Wednesday I had a little adventure in Northwest Indiana with a couple friends (it was supposed to be all the way to Gary, but we lost an hour when the muffler fell off the car and we had to get it looked at). industrial sites, toxic fumes, beautiful decaying architecture, abandoned houses (which may have had cool stuff in them we stole rescued), cheap diner food, low sales tax--that's the Calumet Region for you! we had a nice walk through quaint downtown Whiting, known for its Pierogi Fest in July. I was disappointed the dollar store had every type of sports card except hockey cards...then I noticed a whole sports card shop (I'd seen this at Pierogi Fest but didn't go in because I wasn't paying attention to sports memorabilia at the time). Cheap Seats Sports Cards--it's 1504 119th St. in Whiting, but looks to be closing at the end of March and presumably staying online only (cheapseatscards.com). I got a bunch of cards from 2000-01, 2005-06, and 2006-07 and some photos from the late 1990s or so (game snapshots they'd made multiple prints of). of course I'll share some of the finds.

I don't know a great deal about sports cards as a business, so I'd like to read the new book by Dave Jamieson, Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession. it was excerpted on Slate on Wednesday. thanks to @Marcusist on Twitter for alerting me to this!

other news on Thursday, combining every topic of this post--a special (and pricey) collection of hockey cards featuring all the AHL goalies and famous AHL goalies of the past! (you can find this on the AHL's website)

 

oh, one other piece of news (which should be tagged "self-congratulatory nonsense") (and where's all the news about, oh, I don't know, the BLACKHAWKS, you might be wondering?). re: things I said at the end of the previous post. I came home Thurs. afternoon to this:

and laughed, yes, out loud, for quite some time. this made my day! until the Hawks game ruined it. but then I thought about it again and it's still cool. and congrats to DGB for getting in the New York Times hockey blog this week!

my first trip to a sports card store

yes, somehow in the midst of all the Olympics excitement (and rage at how much of it I can't see--guess whose 6 goals I missed Friday?) I've been doing a few other things. I saw that Sal of the excellent hockey card blog Puck Junk was looking for the card set given out at the Sharks @ Red Wings game Feb. 11, and I happened to have an extra (did I mention I went to that game? I've been posting the non-hockey shots from my trip on Flickr recently. RIP Lafayette Building). this was my excuse to finally go to Tim's Baseball Card Shop (as previously mentioned, featured in an ad that aired during the Super Bowl).

it's a very nice place; I met Tim and his mom and talked a bunch of hockey and collectibles stuff with Sal, who traded something cool from the 1990s I'll post later for the Red Wings set. he asked the prices on some boxes of hockey cards from 1990-91 and when I learned the whole boxes were $8, I had to get them. I'm not really collecting, just picking up stuff for the fun of it, so even if these cards are terribly common I was thrilled because I don't have them yet...

 

  

72 packs of cards! Score has 15 cards/pack; Upper Deck 12. I've only opened a couple dozen so far. I was happy to see North Stars in the first Score pack I opened; I got lots of Jets, Nordiques, and Whalers in the recent 1993-94 card acquisition, but no North Stars yet. (now I want Colorado Rockies and Oakland Seals cards...)

I also stopped back at the dollar store I got the Valentine's football-shaped candy at the other week, and bought what must have been the last two packs of hockey cards there, since I had to dig them out of containers of football cards. I opened a pack (2008-09 Upper Deck Victory) to see Phil Kessel as a Bruin, Cristobal Huet as a Capital, and Dany Heatley as a Senator, which amused me on the bus home.

FIN and CZE again: more 1993 cards!

this post will look awfully familiar. for various reasons, kind of phoning it in here. hope to do a giant Olympic post and more this weekend, before the giant USA vs Canada showdown Sunday night. watching USA, Canada, and Slovakia, all teams with Blackhawks and Bruins, win Thursday was pretty exciting. I've even managed to catch a little of the Games besides hockey, though I still have the same NBC/cable trouble described earlier.

with an assist tonight in Finland's 5-0 win over Germany, Teemu Selanne set the all-time Olympic scoring record (37 points, from 20 goals and 17 assists in 5 Winter Olympics). so...MORE 1993-94 hockey cards....I have more Fleer Ultra cards than any other brand, which is nice because they have photos on the back too:

 

  

and Jaromir Jagr got a lot of attention again, with a goal in Czech Republic's 5-2 defeat of Latvia:

 

see the headlines in the previous post...NHL.com is phoning it in too:

bonus: before the standings were updated early 2/20 with Finland's win, look who was tops: 

  

(note: Blogger would not let me tag this post USA!USA!USA!)

today's stars, 1993's hockey cards

since my access to Olympic coverage is as lousy as the day before (see the cranky comment I put on the previous post) with no hope of improving any time soon, I am forced to just put up old hockey cards and screenshots from NHL.com. oh, who are we kidding, that's absolutely what I wanted to post anyway! I couldn't see any of the Finland-Belarus or Sweden-Germany men's games today (or the women's game that was actually a close one), nor curling (which is a surprisingly popular Twitter topic), nor all the stuff Americans were winning a lot of gold medals in. I did see the Czech Republic-Slovakia game. good game, even if Slovakia lost. Teemu Selanne set an Olympic record in the Finland game, and Jaromir Jagr did quite well for the Czechs. so here they are from my recent purchase of 100s of 1993-94 cards for $6 from an antique mall in downstate Illinois (I had several for each player but these were my favorites):

 

  

and here's your NHL.com headlines, which needless to say couldn't miss out on fun with the countries' names. (this shot of the Belarus goalie is making me sad...)

 

 

happy sports-themed Valentine's!

 

courtesy of a dollar store in Oak Park (where it borders Chicago's west side). as you can see below they had football, baseball, soccer, and basketball. anytime I see something generically representing "sports" it seems to have those four sports on it. obviously it'd be nice to have a hockey one (with puck-shaped candies?), especially since it's a winter sport...but the little candy footballs are cute and "no penalty for holding" would work for a hockey Valentine too...

 

I was running errands and stopped in this store to look for hockey cards. I finally found all the sports card boxes in a big mess on the floor (due to camera battery issues, the photo I thought I took of that didn't turn out--yes, I like taking photos of of lousy store displays) and bought 4 packs of 2008-09 hockey cards, different brand than my last dollar store visit (these were at different chains). some decent stuff, lots of goalies. almost too many, even for me (3 of a 6-card pack?). as long as I'm going on about dollar stores, I could add: I found a dollar at the store. this has never happened to me at a dollar store before!

I've been sick this weekend and want to lie down to watch the last few NHL games today. this will keep me from 1) rambling about Valentine's Day/getting too personal 2) giving in the evil urge to use the special holiday options in Picnik on Flickr to put hearts all over sports photos...

hockey cards, lots and lots of 1990s hockey cards

I had a great day and a half in St. Louis to see the Blackhawks this past weekend, and scores of photos to sort through. lots of fun, but one of the most exciting things was stopping in an amazing antique mall (amazing for the photos I took there, not necessarily for the stuff for sale) on the way back, and I made my first purchase of (older) hockey cards.

my first purchase of hockey cards was just 3 days earlier, at a dollar store in Chicago, thanks to a tip from the Buckeyes are Deadly Nuts blog (some 2008-09 cards, nothing that great). above is 3 bags I got for $2 each (I also bought a 12-card mix for $1). it wasn't till I opened the bags that I realized they're all from 1993-94. I grabbed these in part because I saw they had Whalers, Jets, and Nordiques cards (unfortunately the North Stars were gone by then). it was worth it for that...I haven't sorted these at all but I can tell there are recent Hall of Famers, some players that are still active, some retired ones I know of, and a hell of a lot of names I don't know. I'm going to have fun with this...

(clockwise from top left the cards showing are: Mike Lenarduzzi, Adam Oates, Jeff Beukeboom, Dave Christian, Chris Simon. I don't seem to be able to click on the image to view it larger)

a shiny new condo for the Captain, a little more Christmas, etc.

oh hey there! I was inside nearly all day because it's lousy weather and I have a cold and because of that I couldn't travel and missed Christmas entirely (no family, no gifts, need I elaborate?) and I've mostly been working on completely redoing my other blog's blogroll, which means I've been skimming through blogs about pancake restaurants in suburban Chicago, and economic development in Youngstown, Ohio, and high-speed rail in Europe...whee! (I'm not being sarcastic.)  but of course my mind is on hockey, too...

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the Sunday Chicago Tribune has a story on Jonathan Toews' new condo in the Chicago Loop (saw this item on Kukla's blog this morning). I include it because, well, there's just nothing my guy friends like more than reading articles about a man who's much younger than them, handsome, making more money than they could dream of, extremely talented and admired...who now has a fabulous apartment in possibly the most luxurious part of Chicago. right?

well...at least I might have some readers who'll take note of this sentence in this piece: "On days off, I sort of sit in the steam shower and get a sweat going, just to wake up in the morning."

the condo has a great kitchen, of course, but it says Toews doesn't cook, except: "...if guests were hungry? 'I've made my share of omelets,' he says, with an impish wink."
(PLEASE NOTE: actual article might not contain the phrase "with an impish wink.")

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in very different news, and I meant to post it a few days ago because it didn't get much publicity locally, I don't think: CBS-2 Chicago had a story on how Stan Mikita and his wife Jill were recently victims of identity theft and had $100,000 taken from their account. (covered by the bank)

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I've been stumbling across new sites to add to the blogroll, and sometimes I think to mention them. I'm not into the hockey card (or jerseys, or other collectibles) collecting aspect of hockey fandom (just like I like trains, but avoid getting too interested in model trains) though I definitely think sports cards, etc. can be pretty cool. I'd already blogrolled Puck Junk, and then I just added Shoebox Legends, a blog that covers hockey and baseball cards and has a Boston focus, nice. then there's Cardboard Gods, a site I'm amazed I hadn't seen before. it's hard to explain...except to say it goes way, way beyond just talking about sports cards and the players on them.

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if I didn't scare you off with the mention of my other blog, I'll put in a plug (a little late now) for the Christmas piece I finally wrote there, which rambles a bit to defend cheesy music and fruitcake and so on, and has lovely vintage cookbook covers too. but, a warning: on City of Destiny, I don't swear, I rarely use innuendo, and I properly capitalize sentences (bizarre, I know!)