Back Stories: Downtown Robbie Brown

"Rob's career has come full circle from prolific junior scorer, to 49-goal man with Pittsburgh in 1988-89 and then to the minors where he assembled four straight 100-point seasons. He made it back to the NHL last season when he won a spot on Pittsburgh's roster based on a training camp tryout."

Just reading that little backstory paints a small picture of the yo-yo career of Rob Brown. When you look up prolific scorers of the IHL, he's the posterboy. After putting up an astonishing 259 points in 61 games for St. Albert's of the AMHL, he went on to continue his reign of terror as a Kamloops Blazer, scoring a ridiculous 464 points in 192 games. He even outscored budding superstars Theo Fleury and Joe Sakic in the 86-87 WHL season. That was enough to get him noticed by Pittsburgh and he became a Penguin with the 67th pick in the 1986 NHL Entry Draft. He would go on to spend and he spend three, very productive seasons (some say as a Mario coat-tail rider) on the Penguins. 

He's then traded to Hartford and proceeds to spend the next seven seasons bouncing up and down between various NHL teams that he couldn't seem to stick with, and still putting up a 1.6 PPG performance in the IHL, winning their scoring title three times. [ring...ring...] Pittsburgh calling again. He then goes on to put up solid numbers (40P/24P/23P) in his second, 3-year stint on the Penguins. After that, he went back to the Chicago Wolves of the IHL, who a year later joined the AHL, all the while continuing his onslaught of scoring and averaging over a PPG.

Why couldn't his scoring talent carry him through as an NHL regular? There are many who speculate it was due to him having a hardcore lifestyle away from the rink. Others point to him as being a known "diva" of sorts with an attitude that affected his play and clashed with management. Still, it's hard not to see that despite having a ton of offensive skills, he completely lacked in defensive prowess and his skating was sometimes a liability. 

This card is from the 1998-99 Be A Player set that was put out by In The Game. The card is number #265 in the set and it's the Gold parallel.

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Back Stories: McEachern Madness

"Shawn McEachern used his tremendous speed to become an offensive force on a Pittsburgh Penguins' team full of talented scorers. The former U.S. Olympian showed flashes of his ability at the end of the 1991-92 season and put it all together last season"

 

Waltham, MA native Shawn McEachern became a Pittsburgh Penguin with the 110th pick in the 1987 NHL Draft. As the card mentions, when he finally debuted for the team, he played 15 games to end the season and logged another 19 in the playoffs, earning the 22 year old his name etched on Lord Stanley's mug. He went on to play the 1992-93 season, putting up 61 points...good enough for 8th in team scoring. That's what happens when you are on a roster chocked full of future HOFers.

The Penguins, looking for more grit to help protect their offensive weaponry, traded McEachern to the LA Kings for a familiar face. In his second stint with the team, Marty McSorley put up 21 points with 139 PIMs in his first season back with the team. Meanwhile, Shawn went from playing with Mario Lemieux to playing with Wayne Gretzky and quietly scored 21 points (hey, same-sies). Expecting more out of the kid, the Kings gave up on that experiment pretty quick and packaged Shawn along with Tomas Sandstrom for trade. Their partner this time? The Pittsburgh Penguins, again. The trade capital this time? Marty McSorley, again!

This card is from the 1992-93 Leaf Gold Leaf Rookie insert set and is card #7.

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Back Stories: Statistically Speaking

 

"Jaromir played in both the world junior and senior championships. He led Kladno in goals and points and was the first Czech player to attend an NHL draft without having to defect. He was the fifth player drafted in 1990. Even though Jaromir was the youngest to suit up for an NHL game this season, he scored three game-winning goals (three of the team's five at that point) in Pittsburgh's first 12 games. Pittsburgh moved the left-handed shot to right wing. Jaromir's an accurate shooter, converting 21 percent of his chances in the early going."

The Jagr story is a good one. Pro Set doesn't really paint the whole picture here with the line about not defecting because it wasn't really that simple. In a nutshell, Jaromir left Czechoslovakia to join the Penguins after being drafted but failed to notify the Czech hockey officials of his sudden departure. He was already under contract to play with the Poldi Kladno team and had one year remaining on that deal. But seeing that he signed that deal before he was 18, the Penguins asked the NHL to nullify the contract so he could be signed to the NHL. It's a great story that I'll leave for a later date.

Everyone has seen this card by now. Probably 100 times at least. You may even own 100 of these. As we all know, there's no shortage of 1990-91 Pro Set hockey cards in the world. Most collector's know that 1990-91 Pro Set was riddled with spelling mistakes, errors, misprints, and printing defects. The Jaromir Jagr rookie card is no exception to that phenomenon. 

The most common version of this card shows an alignment issue on the back in the stat box toward the top of the card. Where it lists the stat headers of GP, G, A PTS, PIM, the line is shifted to the left, causing the numbers below to be skewed. The vast majority of the Jagr RC's you find out in the wild will display the back this way. The more "rare", if you want to call it that, version is the corrected, aligned version you see here. I probably have at least a dozen of the error version of the card but for some reason, have never pinned down the corrected copy. This card arrived in a #mailday from my pal John Malone (@BugsyMalone_17)...along with a host of other fanciful goodies I'll probably also use for these posts.

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Back Stories: Woolley Bully

"Jason came over from Florida to join Pittsburgh during the 1996-97 season, his sixth year in the league. He was originally selected by Washington in the third round of the 1989 NHL entry draft. Woolley won a silver medal with Canada at the 1992 Olympics."

Jason was on that rag-tag expansion "Rat" Panthers team that eliminated the Penguins from the playoffs just one year earlier before getting traded to Pittsburgh. The Penguins also received Stu Barnes in the deal, sending Chris Wells to Florida in exchange. 

He was on the 1992 Team Canada squad at the Olympics as the card notes. At 20 years old, he left Michigan State after his junior year, making the Olympic roster after four months of tryouts. What the card fails to mention is that he has the distinction of being the first Canadian to score in an Olympic shootout. 

Oh, and you remember the "skate in the crease" goal by Brett Hull in the Buffalo/Dallas Stanley Cup? He had a front row seat to that. After only 57 games for Pittsburgh, he was traded to Buffalo for a 1998 5th round pick (which turned out to be Rob Scuderi).

This #mailday card comes from the 1997-98 Pacific Crown Collection set. This one is the "ice blue" parallel version of the base card. The card is number #279 in the set. Fun fact about this set, card #66 is missing and wasn't printed. Coincidentally (or the complete opposite), Mario Lemieux doesn't appear on the set checklist. On April 5, 1997, he announced his retirement due to the lingering health problems he faced. In 2001-02, Pacific would later rectify the missing card by including it in their flagship release.  

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Back Stories: A Case of the Kasparaitis'es'is

"The trade that brought defenseman Darius Kasparaitis from the Islanders to Pittsburgh last season instantly stabilized the Penguins blueline and provided the club with one of the NHL's most-agitating physical players."

Over 30 years ago, Darius Kasparaitis was a household name in Pittsburgh that equated to thoughts of anger, disappointment, rage, and wishes of ill will. You need only to look at game 6 of the 1992-93 Division semifinal if you don't believe the torment he instilled in both the players and the fans (and then look to David Volek...stupid David Volek in game 7).

Fast forward three years and that anger and rage morphed into acceptance, excitement, and the proverbial hockey hug from the city, when Kasper was traded to the Penguins. For the next six seasons, Darius became a fan favorite, not for his offensive prowess (he had 15 goals the entire time in the Burgh) but his tough and gritty play. Before being traded to Colorado in 2002, DK logged 661 penalty minutes!

This #mailday card is from the 1997-98 Upper Deck set. It's numbered #391 as part of the base set and is from the subset "Physical Force" that was in Series 2 that year.  It's super shiny with that "black diamond"-type finish so it's hard to not get a glare on the photo. Other players featured in the Physical Force subset included Darren McCarty, Matthew Barnaby, Derian Hatcher and HOFers Chris Chelios, Chris Pronger, and Scott Stevens among others.

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Back Stories: With Arms Wide Op...Sven

"As an extremely talented defenseman who is seldom caught out of position, Sven's style of play is reminiscent of NHL great Larry Robinson. Possessing both superb skating skills and a long reach, Sven was undeniably a steal as the third pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins in this years NHL entry draft. Undeniably, Butenschon's outstanding talent gives him a great future in the Penguin organization"

Whew! By today's hockey card standards, that's a lot to be printed on the back of a card. But it's true. The Penguins did have high hopes for the Itzehoe, Germany/Winnipeg d-man. He was drafted 57th overall in 1994, played two more seasons with the Brandon Wheat Kings and then played another year on the Penguins AHL team, the Cleveland Lumberjacks. 

Problem is that when you have such high praise and expectation, rarely does it work out. Especially for defenseman. He appeared in all of 33 games with Pens over the better part of five seasons and was really only ever an injury call up. He never recorded more than 17 games in one NHL season for the Pens, with his best performance in the organization coming in Wilkes-Barre in 1999-00, where he picked up 19 goals and 40 points. That got him the "A" for the following season. He was eventually traded to the Oilers (for Dan LaCouture), who then dealt him to the Islanders in 2002.  All in all, from a longevity standpoint, he has over 800 games under his belt between the AHL, NHL and DEL.

These four cards came in the same #mailday package which is both weird (that someone would have four together), and awesome at the same time. These are from the 1994 Signature Rookies Tetrad set. That was a multi-sport set that Signature Rookies put out and sold both retail and hobby. Each pack had six cards and there was one autograph in every pack. Back then, that was crazy considering other manufacturers were only getting into the infant stages of regularly putting autographs in products. 

The base set of these had a print run of 45,000 and were all Roman Numeral numbering up to 118, or I suppose, CXVII. High numbers included the Titans subset (#'d to 10,000), 119-130 and the Top Prospects subset (#'d to 20,000), #131-134. Sven here is number CIV in the auto set and these are hand numbered out of 7,750. The "7,750" is actually printed in gold foil while each card has it's number written in blue ink along with the signature.

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