Shiny Prizm Hockey

 

Basketball and football card collectors (not to mention retail flipper guys) love Panini Prizm, and it seems to be one of the most popular sets in those sports year in and year out.  When it comes to hockey though, there was only one true Panini Prizm set released before Panini lost their license to produce NHL trading cards, and that was the 2013-14 set you see above.

True, there were some Prizm cards released as part of the Rookie Anthology set the year prior, but this 2013-14 release is it when it comes to a standalone Prizm hockey set proper.  The cards are absolutely gorgeous if you're a fan of shiny like I am, and the parallels have that fantastic Panini etching, a practice that Topps unfortunately abandoned for its refractors long ago.

I've been making an effort to pick up some parallels of star players, HOFers, or even just members of the Hall of Very Good from the set, before they become the latest thing to skyrocket in price.  Thankfully all of the cards I'm showing here today, including my first two Silver Prizm parallels of David Krejci and Ilya Kovalchuk here, cost mere pocket change on Sportlots.  Even in these crazy times for our hobby, there are still outlets for cheap, satisfying pick-ups to keep us going if we look hard enough.

I like the colored parallels even more than the silvers.  This Patrice Bergeron Red is so fantastic that I bought both copies the seller had available at 75 cents!  Bergeron, Chara, Marchand, Krejci and Tuukka Rask are generational greats in the history of this franchise, and along with sniper David Pastrnak are having another great campaign here in the 2020-21 season.

This generation's "Little Ball of Hate" is really filling in the shoes of the original namesake, the great Pat Verbeek.  His next goal will be the 300th of his NHL career, so he has a legit shot to top the 500-goal mark, just like Verbeek did.  Grabbed three copies of this one, and they look really nice all in a row in a Z-Folio.

Already had a copy of this Lucic, but grabbed a second because the price was right.  "Luc" has bounced around some in recent years, but he had some really exciting seasons in Boston as a goal-scoring bruiser that I will always remember fondly.

Heavy Bruins theme here with the Red parallels, but like I said this was the group that won a Cup for Boston and was a regular playoff contender.  I saw this particular iteration of the team play in person so many times during this stretch, so I enjoy picking up cards of all these guys.  Grabbed a pair of this Red Krejci card.

I swear I'm not an Ilya Kovalchuk super-collector or anything like that, he was just a really solid player that happened to be available cheaply is all.  Besides, how fantastic do these Red parallels look on New Jersey Devils cards?  Fantastic enough that I bought three of these, that's how fantastic.

Ditto for the Ottawa Senators.  Mika Zibanejad (whose hair is now much longer than what you see here) has been slumping a bit for the Rangers this season, but this is an amazing looking piece of cardboard.

Hall-of-Famer Martin St. Louis for under a dollar?!?!  I'll take two!  Hell, I'd have taken ten at that price, but alas, there were only two available.

One-time Boston Bruin, one of the top scorers of his era, and potential future HOFer?  Sure!  Snagged a pair of these for the Z-Folio as well.

The Capitals look absolutely stunning on these.  Very high on my list of hobby goals is to acquire a Red Alex Ovechkin, but I have literally yet to see a single one available at any price point in the many weeks I've been searching.  If you have one, I will pay handsomely in trade or Paypal credit!  For now, happy to have a pair of these Backstrom cards, featuring one of the premier set-up men in the business, and the man who has assisted on many an Ovechkin goal over the years.

Hall of Fame for Getzlaf?  Not sure, but certainly the Hall of Very Good, and the face of the Ducks franchise for about a decade and a half now.  I happily grabbed three of these for the combined price of less than $2.

Another guy who has sort of been the face of a franchise since he came into the league, or shortly thereafter.  Only picked up one of these but in retrospect probably should have bought a trio.  Benn has never won a Stanley Cup, but did pick up an Art Ross Trophy back in 2015.

Pleased to land this Joe Thornton, the man who currently has the 14th most career points in NHL history.  The only reason I'd be excited to see Toronto win a Stanley Cup this year would be so that Jumbo Joe could hoist it at last.

With the Thornton card in my order, it made sense to pair it with his longtime teammate Joe Pavelski, so I threw this one in too.

Would have been cool to pick up a Red of each of the Sedin twins, but since the seller had just this card I ended up with two Henriks instead!  Obviously this one would look better on Blue, or even more so Green, but this is the card I ended up with for now.

Your eyes may be sore from looking at all that bright red holo foil, so let's calm things down with a trio of soothing blue cards before we call this a post, shall we?

Well, what do you know, I did land a Blue Sedin.  Yeah, that looks way better with the Canucks colors than the Red does.  Again, Henrik was the only Sedin brother available in blue, a Daniel collector must have cleared out his inventory before I arrived on the site.

Once again we have Ilya Kovalchuk.  Looks like I'm well on my way to a rainbow of this card.  This one, and the final card up next, are actually Blue Pulsar parallels.  If memory serves, these were exclusive to Prizm product purchased at Wal-Mart.  They seem to be some degree rarer than the standard Blue parallels, anyway.

Finally, we have what may be my favorite card of this entire order, a Blue Pulsar Patrice Bergeron.  One of the under-rated players of the modern era, and one of the greatest ever to don a Bruins sweater.  Very, very happy to have this card in my Prizm hockey collection.

So there you have it, a bunch of really shiny and really colorful hockey cards that I managed to find on the cheap, even during these insane times in the hobby.  If you have any of these Prizm hockey parallels available to trade let me know, and if not thanks as always for stopping by my little corner of the internet!