The Other Richer

A couple of new additions to announce today, one of which has a semi-interesting backstory. In their history, the Lightning have had two players named Stephane Richer suit up. Two Stephane J Richers to be exact. WHile the latter of the two was a fairly well known and successful NHLer the first one played onle 3 games in a Tampa uniform, in the inaugural 1992-93 season, before being traded to Boston. He would also play a handful of games with Florida.

Now I've been using hockeydb to find the majority of the cards and check to see if they even exist for some of the more obscure players. Hockeydb has a feature that automatically searches ebay for the cards of the player you're searching. However, the two Richers results are always intermingled. I had never found one of the more obscure Richer before stumbling upon a card from the German DEL while wading through the other Richer's various cards. Needless to say I am pretty happy to have added Stephane J.G. Richer to the collection. (This is how the Lightning's media guide makes the distinction between the two. The other one is Stephane J.J. Richer.) Add in the facts that the card features a photo of an ad-filled Adler Mannheim jersey and is in German and you have one of the more unique cards of the set so far and an instant favorite of mine. I will get a picture of this card up sometime next week when the scanner is unpacked.

Since the last update I've also added pugilist Ryan Tobler and Adrian Aucoin (Calgary Flames).

Hidden Treasures

Preparing for my move I've been cleaning out my closet and came across a box of old (89-91 era) hockey cards that I had collected awhile back. Combing through I found another 7 former Lightning players. Steven Finn (Nordiques), Ken Hodge (Bruins), Grant Ledyard (Sabres), Troy Mallette (Rangers), and Kjell Samuelsson (Penguins). Also in the box were some older AHL Top Prospects sets and I was able to pull Lukas Krajicek (San Antonio Rampage) and Kyle Wanvig (Houston Aeros) out. All in all a pretty good haul from stuff I had completely forgotten about.

08-09 O-Pee-Chee Update Set

Just got my hands on these, adding David Koci, Steve Eminger, Andrej Meszaros, and Adam Hall, as well as Lightning versions of Gary Roberts and Mark Recchi. 163 down, 124 to go.

This will probably be the last set of new cards for a couple weeks as I'm moving into a new apartment. Once I get my scanner unpacked from storage I plan to start having a Card of the Week feature.