Friday, December 14, 2007

A major haul

I'll have to admit to feeling a little bit of pressure when it came to hounding the Calgary Flames on Thursday, thanks to loyal Hound Central 3.0 reader Brett's comments that he was looking forward to reading about my haul from his hometown team.

It only intensified, too, when I heard that the team was, let's say, less than willing as the players made their way to an afternoon practice Wednesday at the St. Pete Times Forum. The players would sign, but many were limiting their autographs to one each.

Well, the Flames must had some great meals and a restful night of slumber because I found most of the team to be capable, pleasant and willing signers. How good were they? We added another 56 autographs, including 22 pucks and 11 players, including Adrian Aucoin and Owen Nolan, on Colin's team sheet.

Now, if we can post those kinds of numbers from a "grumpy" team, imagine how many we could've added from a not-so-grumpy team?

All kidding aside, Thursday was one of those days, even despite some minor disappointments, that reinforce the reason why we're building this collection.

All the big names - Jarome Iginla, Miikka Kiprusoff and Dion Phaneuf signed. And Craig Conroy and Daymond Langkow joined Kiprusoff in signing three pucks each.

We did miss Iginla, Kiprusoff and Phaneuf on the team sheet, as they opted to take the bus, rather than walk, at game time. All in all, though, it was a pretty memorable day.

In fact, I believe we got an autograph from every member of the team, as well as the coaches. Not a bad day, if you ask me. I guess Brett was right. It was a haul.

Pucks, shown above:
Top row: Eric Godard, Kristian Huselius and Mike Keenan;
Bottom row: Eric Nystrom, Cory Sarich and Alex Tanguay.

Cards, show below:
Top row: Dustin Boyd, Matthew Lombardi and Curtis McElhinney;
Bottown row: Wayne Primeau, Eric Nystrom and Stephane Yelle.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

AWESOME! Glad to see you had some great success. Although I can't say from personal experience, I've heard that Phaneuf is a real golden boy in Calgary and I think his ego is starting to get the better of him.

Iggy on the other hand is a great ambassador for the game. I wish more players had his attitude on and off the ice.

Kipper.....who knew? I expected him to be a tough signer.

Congrats and keep up the great work guys.

Brett

Chuck V said...

I did the Coyotes this morning before their game in New Jersey. There were 30 people jammed into a 15 foot wide sidewalk in front of a hotel with maybe 50 feet of frontage. Gotta love midtown Manhattan. I walked away with
4 Keith Ballard cards
1 Daniel Carcillo card
1 Ilya Bryzgalov card
5 Shane Doan cards
1 Ed Jovanovski card
6 Niko Kapanen cards
4 Zbynek Michalek cards
2 Radim Vrbata cards
and...........



Wayne Gretzky 8x10
He came out and signed for about 5 or 10 minutes, but it was an absolute madness. I used my 6'4" frame to reach over the crowd, got my picture done, and got out of the crowd. Gretzky actually stood in the door of the bus, and the crowd was so big that some of the Coyotes (Doan, Carcillo, and a couple of others) couldn't get on the bus. I missed a bunch of the guys trying to get Gretzky, but honestly, I don't care. It was so crazy that he signed an ESPN the Magazine for a dealer which was grabbed by another dealer who ran off.