pretty big hockey milestone

 Although I have not had much motivation to write, I am still doing card stuff almost every day. And that stuff is mostly in the form of scanning, which as I've well documented in previous posts is one of my favorite things to do. 

Today I hit a pretty big milestone in scanning, as I've scanned my 20,000th NHL Card! 

It turned out to be this Mikael Backlund card from 2020-21 Parkhurst. 

Ever since I began collecting the NHL, which is just a month short of 8 years already, I've been storing all the NHL scans in one folder. I assumed I would have to break them up into year folders like I did for the NBA and NASCAR, but that happened on my old computer, which maxxed out at 16000 items per folder. My current computer obviously doesn't have that limitation, since after adding the November scanned cards I was at 19726 scans in the folder. I knew it was likely going to see me hit the 20000 mark during December, but then I did a big batch of NBA and Non-Sports cards after a big batch of hockey. After the last batch I was 17 scans away but I have found that planning scanning isn't as fun as random scanning so I wasn't going to force it...then I finished that box and opened up the next box to work on and what do I come across but the entirety of the 2020-21 Parkhurst cards I got in trade on the Database several years ago and hadn't scanned yet. Backlund happened to be the card that was the 20,000th. 

While this is #20000 for the NHL, this isn't #20000 for hockey.   I have 7 cards from international leagues, 450 for minor leagues, and 39 for national team only sets, which means I'm basically at 2/3rds of my entire hockey collection scanned at this point! I have 31thousand something cards in my NHL collection, although that number will probably go up at Christmas since that is my #1 card receiving day of the year, although if not, that's OK too. 

I'm starting to feel like the end is in sight on the scanning project. There's still years ahead of me but the scanned cards now outweigh the waiting to be scanned by a significant margin...I estimate that I have only about 1/4th left to scan or less. Of course I also estimated that I would finish scanning everything in 2016, so my estimating skills are poor at best, LOL. I'm actually a bit worried about what I'm going to do when I finish scanning everything. That's so much of my life now for so long, I don't know what I'll do with my time once I finish. I'll think of something, that's a problem for another day, another year...for now I got back to editing scans. 

The Forgotten New York hockey team

 Being from New York, I get two say I have multiple local teams, although one of our teams is 8 hours away. I support all three teams, but did you know there was once another? 

Indeed, the original New York team was the New York Americans, which debuted in the 1925-26 season renting out Madison Square Garden, which would prove to be a fatal mistake for the franchise, as their success prompted MSG to create their own team- the Rangers- the very next year. The two teams would share an uneasy situation with both teams playing their home games in the same arena for the entirely of the Americans' existence. 

The team was constantly facing financial difficulty and barely made it through the Depression, and it could not survive losing the vast majority of it's players to World War II- the team last played during the 1941-42 season. 

The team's final season was known as the Brooklyn Americans, although they played in MSG, which is in Manhattan, not Brooklyn. 

Getting a card from the Americans was something I was looking forward to happening, but my options are fairly limited. They have almost 250 cards issued, but the vast majority were issued during the team's actual existence, and are quite rare. However, I managed to get my hands on a box of the 2004-05 In the Game Franchises sets for both the US releases, and this allowed me to add both versions of the Americans to my collection. 

Red Dutton was player, coach and even owner of the Americans- and layed a curse on the Rangers saying they would never win a Stanley Cup during his lifetime...which turned out to be true. 

Although he grew up in Canada, Schriner was the first NHL player who was born in Russia. 

The Uniforms they wore during their New York Americans days were based on the flag, with one version having the star field in blue, and the other in red. I do not know which was the home and road versions, or even if they were home and road versions. 

This set goes pretty in-depth, and the sole year of the Brooklyn Americans is also represented. In fact, the Database shows only 10 cards ever issued for the Brooklyn Americans, and 7 of them are from this set. These two base cards are the complete team set, and both have two regional promo versions making up the majority of the team's cardboard history. They only ever got one card issued during their only season of existence, and only 4 base cards make up the complete collection for the team- this one set provides 50% of them. 

I don't really know much about Chuck Rayner, despite the fact that his entire NHL career was spent in the New York area- 1 year with the Americans, 8 with the Rangers. He is a Hall of Famer. 

I know even less about Mel Hill, although his Wikipedia entry mentions that he also played professional soccer. 

All four players are appearing for the first time in my collection. My main focus being on getting at least one card of every person to get one, or at least as many different people as possible. The pre-Original 6 era is largely absent from this project. 

When this team folded is when the Original 6 era began. The NHL entered the 1930s with 10 teams, but three failed during the depression and the Americans failed during WWII. The league would operate with only six teams until the 1967-68 season, when it doubled in size. 

Despite being around a short time- 17 years - with minimal success, the team managed to put 14 people into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and set some sports history by being the first team in ANY professional sport to include the player's name on the back of the uniform, if Wikipedia is to be believed. 

Getting an Americans card- often called Amerks- was something I didn't think would actually happen any time soon. Although my "Top 10 most wanted" list on the sidebar mentioned an unnamed team, (that was the Cleveland Barons- now named because the team is present in my collection, stay tuned) it really SHOULD have been the Americans...I just didn't think it would be possible. I still don't think getting a card issued when the team actually existed is possible, but I won't give up hope.

A visit to the US Hockey Hall of Fame

 In May, on our Epic adventure detailed in my previous post, my brother and I visited the US Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota. It was my first time visiting Minnesota and we went there specifically to go to the museum. 

When I visited the Basketball Hall of Fame, I broke that up into multiple posts and I never finished it (I still plan to when I have time) and I don't want to do that here. Instead of showing everything, which was about 1000 pictures, I'm going to share my favorites with a link to the rest. The museum is really worth visiting if you are a hockey fan of any degree, it was awesome!

The outside of the building

a small statue outside

The store

A chair set met out of hockey sticks and signed by gold medal winners

The 4th Zamboni ever built! One of my favorite artifacts in the museum. 

The scoreboard was the one used in the Mighty Ducks movie.

Quite a bit of the lower level is based on the 1980 Olympic team, aka the Miracle on Ice.

A took close up photos of each and every placque. 

A display of vintage skates, dating back to the 1880s.

Old time skate sharpener

I think these are old cards glued to the stick

My brother makes a guest appearence

This was cool but a little confusing

a building inside a building!

They have a thing set up with a radar where you can see how hard you can shoot a puck

Miracle on Ice themed Foosball, which you can play...

and Blades of Steel, which you can also play!

Along with the Zamboni, these red and blue WHA pucks were my other favorite artifacts. The WHA experimented with these pucks to see if they would show up better on TV, but it didn't pan out, and they are extremely rare. 

One large section on the top floor was on college hockey. I don't do any college sports stuff but I still photographed everything.

I opened two packs of cards in the parking lot

Then we drove to the other side of town and saw the world's largest freestanding hockey stick! 

and a 700 pound puck, too!

There's a wall of history,  but it was 30 degrees and windy so I kinda rushed through it.

There's a large representation of a Topps card on the wall

I was shivering so much I cut off the top of the word and the photo of Frank Brimsek. Ooops! 

Here's the link to my website where all the pictures are: US Hockey Hall of Fame

Thanks for reading!