Quick Discounted Upper Deck Blaster

The Stanley Cup Finals kicked off last night, with the Penguins snatching game one on a late 3rd period goal in front of their home crowd.  I'm not particularly rooting for either team, I'm just enjoying the games.  On the one hand I think it would be cool to see Crosby win another Cup, on the other hand it would be kind of nice to see Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau finally get there after all these years.

In any event, it seems like an appropriate time to post a quick blaster of 2014-15 Upper Deck hockey that's been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of months.  I picked this up on Dave and Adam's Card World in the same order that provided my Donruss Soccer box.

I wasn't really planning on building this set or anything, but ended up with this blaster in my cart for three reasons.  First, it's an Upper Deck flagship set that I had very few cards from, so I knew the majority of what I pulled would be new to my collection.  Secondly, there are a really great crop of rookies in this set and I was hopeful that one of my two promised Young Guns would be a good one.  Finally, it was cheap.  As in $10.

I'm not going to bother showing you every card I pulled, especially since this set has been out a couple of years and you've probably seen all the images elsewhere already.  I did select a few choice base cards that featured interesting photographs, and that were all new to my collection.

Love this close look at Pavel Datsyuk working his magic in the face-off circle.  Kind of sad that we've likely seen him play in his final NHL game, but you can't blame the guy for wanting to return home for quality of life and time with family.  I'm sure he'll be announcing his decision in the coming weeks, but it sounds all but certain that he'll forego the final year on his NHL contract and begin playing in the KHL.

How about a couple of celebration shots?  Love the photograph on this Toews card, complete with ecstatic fans and some shameless advertising for NBCSN and Honda.

This one is not quite as exciting, but still a nice photograph and I like that you can see the puck rolling around in the net there.

I know goalie-cam shots are getting to be old hat at this point, but this one is pretty decent.

Here's my first Young Guns card of the box.  Not one of the rookies I was hoping to pull to be honest, but those are the breaks.  At least Namestnikov has become a reliable NHL regular, appearing in 80 games for Tampa Bay this past season.  Bonus appearance by Steven Stamkos lurking in the background as well!

I pretty much have to like Brad Marchand as a Bruins fan, and he certainly had a great individual season even though it was a disappointing one for the team.  With all of that being said though, he seems to have a personality that wouldn't really jive with mine, to say the least.

I thought this photograph of goaltender Jhonas Enroth was a little more interesting than yet another tightly-cropped on-ice shot at least.

Okay, that's enough of the base cards, let's check out the couple of inserts that I pulled.  These Shining Stars cards just don't do it for me, this one's been dumped into my trade box.

Canvas cards on the other hand are some of my favorite inserts in any product, period.  I ended up with two really nice ones out of this particular blaster, starting with the young and talented center Aleksander Barkov of the Panthers.  Florida is chock full of top young talent, and I sort of adopted them as my team once the Bruins failed to make the playoffs this year.

The other Canvas card was even better than that, as it will fit beautifully into my "players with The Cup" collection.  What a great moment captured on cardboard here as Anze Kopitar celebrates the Kings Stanley Cup Championship.  That is the smile of an athlete that's on top of the world right there!

Alright, just one card left to show, and I definitely saved the best for last.  My first Young Guns card was nothing special, but my second was one of the cards I had most hoped to pull...

After showing some promise in his 2014-15 rookie season with 37 points in 80 games, Evgeny Kuznetsov really made a name for himself in his sophomore season this past year.  He reached the 20-goal plateau for the first time, and his 77 points were good enough to get him into the top 10 in scoring for the entire league!  Kuznetsov was quiet to say the least in the Caps' playoff run, but he's certainly going to be making an impact for many years to come as he's still just 24 years old.

The cheapest copy of this card available on COMC at the moment is $34, not bad pulling one from a $10 discount blaster!

That's all I've got for today, I hope those of you that are hockey fans enjoy the remainder of the Stanley Cup Finals!  I plan to be back with another trade post tomorrow...