Sunday morning homily XI

Kudos, I suppose, are due to Upper Deck for providing not one, but two cards, of Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin within the Young Guns subset of its Series II release. As I reported yesterday, Malkin has two cards within the subset. This card, shown at left, is the Young Guns checklist.

It should come as no surprise that I'm not the biggest fan of Upper Deck, seeing that it owns all of the licensing for NHL trading cards. In essence, Upper Deck is a monopoly. That's why I don't mind helping out the little guy, paying a little more for a box of ITG Heroes and Prospects, provided I can find any here in Tampa Bay.

As a consumer, I want to have choices within the hockey card industry. And branding cards with such names as Fleer and Parkhurst, as Upper Deck has done, is a cheap attempt at tricking uninformed hockey collectors. Unfortunately, though, this lack of competition means I'll have to give my money to Upper Deck if I wish to continue in this hobby.

The only way I can protest, other than writing these little ditties, is to limit the brands that I'll buy. So, other than Upper Deck Series I and II, the mainstays of any collection (primarily because of the value of the Young Guns subset), I'll be limiting my future purchases to the Fleer and Parkhurst brands, solely because those cards require no prep work for autographs.

What about these deals?

Over at Wicked Bruins Fans, blogmaster Jaci (sounds like a rap name, doesn't it?) isn't asking for too much from her beloved Bruins. She wants them to play hard and win games. I mean, who doesn't want their hometown team to fulfill those goals.

In response, I've proposed these trades:

To Tampa: Brad Boyes, Stanislav Chistov, Brad Stuart and Hannu Toivonen
To Boston: Ruslan Fedotenko, Vaclav Prospal, Doug O'Brien, Luke Richardson and Marc Denis

To New York Rangers: Andrew Alberts, Milan Jurcina, Petr Tenkrat and a No. 1 draft pick
To Boston: Ryan Hollweg and Fedor Tyutin

Any feedback?

Finally, some hockey

After a pretty thin January down here in Tampa, I'm really looking forward to the month of February. Not only do we have tickets to six games, including the Bruins, Penguins and the Dallas Stars, but seven hounding adventures, including Los Angeles and Phoenix of the Western Conference, as well.