The Avs Hockey Podcast

Two Fan's Perspectives on Colorado Avalanche Hockey...and jerseys too.

Andrew Brunette, My First Game Worn Jersey.

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There came a time, a few years ago, where I felt that I had saved enough money to start thinking about “upping the ante” when it came to my jersey collection.  I had a lot of cool Avs jerseys, but something was missing.  It was time to go after some game worn jerseys.

I ended up on Captain’s Jerseys site.  I’d hyperlink it for you, but he doesn’t do near as much as he used to when it comes to jerseys on his site.  Anyways, I ran across an Andrew Brunette game used alternate jersey from the 2005-2006 season.  I’m a real sucker for any jersey with a patch on it.  (Have I mentioned that 100 times already yet?)  I sent him what I thought was a fair offer on the jersey, he countered with an offer that wasn’t so fair, and I decided to turn it down.  Guess what showed up on eBay a few weeks later?  After I got over feeling cheated about him not giving me a heads up about the jersey being listed I followed the auction and won it.  If I remember right, the auction ended at about $75 cheaper than my original offer to him.  Funny how things work out sometimes.  I finally had my first game worn jersey for my collection.

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I don’t meet many Avalanche fans, or jersey fans, that don’t like the style of this jersey for a lot of reasons.  I’ve missed them since the Avalanche stopped wearing them.  They just have that classic look that everyone has a hard time disliking.

The first thing I noticed on the jersey was the game wear.  Seeing the “battle scars” that litter the jersey is always part of the excitement when a gamer arrives.  This jersey had a fair amount of wear.  Here are some examples.

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And I don’t really want to even guess what this is above the 15 on the right sleeve.  Glue?  A burn from the boards?  Snot?  Who knows?

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I noticed a few more things about this jersey right away too.  One thing is the new NHL shield sewn directly over the old NHL shield on the back tail.  This is consistent with many of the jerseys from this era.  When Reebok took over the branding from CCM/Koho, this is what they did to recycle the jerseys in a sense.  Here’s the new shield:

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And here’s the old NHL shield with the tail of the jersey flipped up.

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The tag you see above is the Meigray tag.  Every team that has signed a deal with Meigray has their game worn and game issued jerseys tagged this way.  Each jersey has its own number and the “C” in front of the “02824” indicates that this jersey came from the third year of the game worn jersey program.  Here’s the weird part though, this jersey has two Meigray tags.  The one above is actually on the bottom of the front right of the jersey, where no Meigray tags ever are.  Here’s the real Meigray tag, where it’s supposed to be, on the back left side of the bottom of the jersey.

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The small patch to the left of the Meigray tag helped Meigray “recycle” the jerseys they had tagged for the 2004-2005 NHL season, which was a total wash as a result of the players being locked out by the owners of the league.  I contacted Meigray about the double tag and they said it was a mistake on their part.  It was also noted in their records that this jersey was double-tagged.  I hadn’t seen a jersey with two Meigray tags on it before this one and I haven’t seen one since.  Strange quirks are fun, especially when the jersey is yours.

Since this jersey I have added many more game issued and game worn jerseys which you’ll hear all about in the future, I just wanted to share with you how the fever began.

The Sheriff’s In Town…

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Six foot, five inches, 240 pounds.  That’s what’s known in the NHL as a heavyweight.  They don’t come around very often and they definitely serve a purpose.  In his 51 fights in an Avalanche jersey, Scott Parker protected some of the best players in the game.  He was a first round draft pick of the Avs, the 20th pick overall, in the 1998 draft.  He left for the first time when he was traded to the San Jose Sharks on June 21, 2003.  Then on February 27, 2007 the Sharks traded Parker back to the Avalanche.  When he returned this is one of the jerseys he wore.

Many of you will remember “The Sheriff” wearing number 27.  He wore that jersey number for 232 of his 242 games with the Avs.  When he was traded back to the Avalanche in 2007 defenseman Ossi Vaananen was wearing 27 at the time.  Vaananen signed outside the NHL during the 2007 off season and Parker was able to get his regular number 27 back.  This jersey being from one of the 10 games that Parker didn’t wear number 27 was one of the things that drew me to it.  Here is one of the other reasons.

And here’s a better look, courtesy of gamewornauctions.net.  They have a better camera than I do.

As a fighter, Parker put a lot of stress on the necks of his jerseys.  Check out this example from the 2001-2002 season.  Photo again courtesy of gamewornauctions.net.  Their camera rocks.

Scott Parker obviously kept the equipment manager for the Avs busy.  I love the color coordination on the white jersey.  There are also stains pretty much all around the neck.

As well as some staining and a stick or puck mark on the piping just under the Avalanche crest on the chest.

This jersey definitely tells a great story, but another interesting story is about Scott Parker ended his career with the Avalanche as well as retiring from the NHL.  It’s not your everyday retirement.  Parker played 25 games with the Avalanche during the 2007-2008 season.  He had no points in those games and logged 70 penalty minutes.  During one of those 25 games he suffered a concussion and ended up on the injured reserve.  Here’s where things get foggy in terms of the story.  Supposedly, when Parker was deemed healthy he was assigned to Colorado’s AHL affiliate.  That was an assignment he never showed up for.  The terms of what really happened were never really made public, and I really don’t have a guess as to what happened either.  What I do know is that his contract was eventually terminated for insubordination.  That’s something we, as sports fans, don’t see every day.

Parker also retired in a strange way.  He never officially announced that he would no longer play in the NHL until he went on a local radio show and said it there during an informal interview.  This was the result of too many concussions in too short of an amount of time.

I have to admit, Parker was never one of my favorite Avalanche players (and I have caught a little heat from fans thinking the same thing), but I also have to admit that I’m really happy that I had the chance to add this jersey to my collection.  Between the story behind the number and the neck reinforcement/repair that I had never seen on a Avs jersey before, it fits in my closet better than I ever thought it would.

2007-2008 Ian Laperriere Playoff Game Worn Jersey: It’s Still All About Lappy, Part 2

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I promised you a “partner jersey” post in the first Ian Laperriere jersey post, so here it is.  This is the burgundy jersey that Lappy wore late in the 2007-2008 season, as well as in the playoffs.

There isn’t a lot of game used to share with you on this jersey.  The darker jerseys never show wear near as well as the white or lighter color jerseys.  The one thing I did notice right away is that the neck on the jersey is very “stressed out.”  The thread is beginning to pop all over the neckline.  That’s the direct result of a few things.

This fight with Marian Gaborik of the Minnesota Wild.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmL2Oxu2cy8[/youtube]

This fight with Dave Cowan of the Vancouver Canucks.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYs50HxLtAA[/youtube]

Not so much in this fight with Steve Staios of the Edmonton Oilers, but it’s still fun to watch the jersey that’s in your collection in action.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2a4WgABxtk[/youtube]

And especially this fight with Stephane Veilleux when he was with the Wild.  The neck takes a beating during this one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W673VeX8c0E[/youtube]

This jersey has the same modifications as the white version, with the elastic above the NHL shield and behind the lower part of the front of the neck.  Here’s the front.  And if you look really close, you can see how the thread around the neck is beginning to come out, especially just up and to the left of the NHL shield and on the back right side of the neck as well.

And here’s a look a the inside.

I didn’t originally plan to buy both of the Laperriere jerseys, but I couldn’t resist after I saw the white version in person.  Like I said in the first post, Lappy quickly became one of my all time favorite Avalanche players.  On top of that, his jerseys are fairly affordable in the grand scheme of game worn jersey collecting.  That’s why it was, and always will be, all about Lappy when it comes to my game worn jersey collection.

It’s Still All About Lappy

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My Dad has a buddy who is a huge Los Angeles Kings fan.  When the Colorado Avalanche signed Ian Laperriere on July 2, 2004, my Dad’s friend told us that we would love Lappy.  I had become familiar with Ian Laperriere’s name from my years of following hockey.  I knew he was a hard (and crooked…zing!) nosed player who specialized in playing gritty hockey, but I obviously didn’t have any extended experience watching him play night after night.  In the end, it didn’t take me and the majority of Avalanche fans long to prove my Dad’s friend right, everyone loved Lappy for all of the right reasons.

As a result, during the next Avs game worn jersey sale, I had no choice but to jump on this….

This jersey was worn by Ian Laperriere during the last part of the 2007-2008 season.  Lappy also wore it during the six game series win against the Minnesota Wild as well as the four game whoopin’ the Avs received against the Red Wings in the second round of the 2007-2008 Stanley Cup Playoffs series I won’t mention.

This jersey has two quirks that I love about it.  The first is a neck modification that I think NHL equipment managers learned about the hard way.  When the new Reebok Edge jerseys were implemented at the beginning of the 2007-2008 season I imagine that many of the guys that got into fights ripped the front of the necks of their jerseys.  One would think that Reebok would have addressed this issue as they designed these jerseys, but Reebok didn’t think about a lot of things when they created this “new and improved” jersey system.  I’ll cover those details in future posts.  Anyways, here is the front of the neck.

Just above the NHL shield is some blue stitching, this is what it’s there for.

That is a piece of elastic that’s there to keep the jersey from ripping down the middle to the crest whenever it’s stretched far enough.  And during fights, these jerseys, and a few of the players, take a beating.  The elastic is a preventative measure to help the jersey last a little longer.

The other quirk, which wasn’t Reebok’s fault at all, is the huge repair between the “1” and the “4” on the left sleeve.

How that rip happened is not something I’m exactly sure of.  Could have been a skate cut, a rip from a fight, or something else.  What I do know is that repair makes things easy when it comes to photomatching the jersey.  Photomatching is when a collector or a seller finds photos of that player, wearing that jersey, during a game.  Any unique marking on the jersey makes it that much simpler to make that match.  Here is my photomatch for this jersey.  Take a good look at that left sleeve between the numbers.  How cool is that?  Game worn jerseys are cool, photomatched games worn jerseys are even cooler.

Lappy wore this jersey during this fight with Jim Vandermeer of the Calgary Flames.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgXH_k8H1YA[/youtube]

He’s also wore it during this fight with Steve Staios of the Edmonton Oilers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z-9cw7p4_o[/youtube]

I liked this jersey, and Lappy, so much that I decided to get its partner.  It’s the dark version of the same jersey worn during the same part of the same season.  I will feature that jersey in a future post.

I still miss Lappy.  I know many other Avalanche fans do as well.  He was a pleasure to watch night in and night out.  He’s one of those rare players that “brings it” every single game.  I’m convinced that if every NHL team had a Lappy on it that hockey would be more popular to many people.  He plays the game the way it’s meant to be played.  I know Lappy’s opponents don’t prefer playing against him, and that’s not because he’s dirty or full of himself, it’s a little thing called respect.