End of Hibernation / #155 - Peter Sundstrom

So this was meant to be a several-times-a-week thing, but I haven't actually posted since November, and haven't put a card up since September. Been busy! Really! I'll try to get back on it again; I'd like to do this up right.

I've been planning to restart this, and today I got impetus in the mail:


The scan's a bit crappy; my scanner is tempermental. Hopefully I'll get a better one done this weekend, but I ain't making any promises.

Peter Sundstrom (or Sundström, if you live in a land where umlauts are easier to create on keyboards) was, to my mind, the less-famous of the Sundström brothers that came over to the NHL in the mid-'80s. I have some vague memories of Patrik playing with the Canucks and Devils, but if it weren't for the hockey card evidence, I would have completely forgotten (or didn't know about in the first place) Peter. But he did put together a decent little career, racking up 338 NHL games for the Rangers, Capitals, and Devils. After he left the NHL, he returned to Sweden and played several more seasons with Malmö. He also represented Sweden in two Canada Cups (1984 and 1987).

As an aside, the Swedish version of Wikipedia says that Patrik and Peter hold the all-time NHL record for twins playing on opposite teams in the same game, with 18. (Ron and Rich Sutter, again according to Swedish Wikipedia, faced off 17 times.) I'm not going to double-check that stat, but it is pretty cool.

Peter Sundstrom's stats at hockeydb

Playing Catchup

Illness, home internet problems and general busy-ness have put this on hold, so I'll try to get back on track with a Two-For Thursday.

#365 -- Mike Bullard, Penguins Goal Leader

Mike Bullard was one of those great second-tier scorers of the 1980s that sort of faded into the background because he played for a lousy team and because the first-tier scorers were putting up such insane numbers. I'm pretty sure he was Pittsburgh's first-ever 50-goal scorer, with 51 in 1983-84. He also had one of the great mustaches of the 1980s, a style that always makes me think of highway patrolmen in, say, South Dakota. Yeah, he may have just busted you for speeding, but you know you're dealing with a good guy here.

Bullard started bouncing around the league pretty quickly after Pittsburgh traded him to Calgary in 1986, going from to the Flames to the Blues to the Flyers in quick succession. His career sort of derailed, too, as he went from scoring 103 points to playing in Switzerland in the space of about three years. He came back for an encore with the Maple Leafs (and while that was one of the least consequential of his NHL stops, I usually picture him as a Leaf), then went to Germany, where he carved out a really nice decade-long career as one of the league's stars. He's now a coach there, with EV Landshut, and that's where I got this card signed.

This is one of two Bullard cards in the set, and it's the less attractive of the two, but the signed regular card is also signed in the same green ink and it's pretty much impossible to see. While I love the '84-'85 design, I'm not crazy about the team leaders cards. Pastel blue and pink?

#193 -- Doug Wickenheiser

The story of Doug Wickenheiser always makes me sad, and when Eagles fans booed the selection of Donovan McNabb at the 1999 NFL draft, I thought of him. Sadly, unlike McNabb, Wickenheiser wasn't able to outshine the player (Denis Savard) he was picked over, and Montreal fans weren't the type to let that slide.

He earned a measure of redemption playing in St. Louis, where he was a key part of one of the great moments in Blues history, scoring the winner in the Monday Night Miracle game over Calgary. He also had bad luck -- the year this card came out, he suffered a severe knee injury during a team outing and missed the better part of a year. (St. Louis Blues parties seem to be a bit cursed -- Bob Gassoff died after one, and now Erik Johnson is out for the season after hurting himself on a golf cart.)

Wickenheiser played a few solid seasons for the Blues, then shuffled between the NHL and AHL for a while, went to Europe, came back and settled in St. Louis after his career, becoming a pretty well-known face in the Blues alumni. Sadly, he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and passed away in 1999, at just 37 years old.

The St. Louis Blues 14 Fund was established in his memory, and his father-in-law wrote a book, "The Last Face-Off: The Doug Wickenheiser Story." The Blues haven't retired his number, and as a fan, I wish they would.

#164 - Brad McCrimmon

Brad McCrimmon was a steady defenseman for a really long time, one of those guys you sort of forget about because he's not flashy, not hazardous, and not a thug. He spent nearly 20 years in the NHL and picked up a Cup with the 1990 Flames. I remember him most because in the early 1990s, it seemed like there was a minimum of one Brad McCrimmon card in every pack of cards I purchased.

More recently, he was a well-regarded assistant coach with my local team, the Thrashers, for several years. Word was that all the players wanted him to get the head coach job after Bob Hartley was canned, but it ultimately went to John Anderson instead and McCrimmon is now, I think, an assistant with the Red Wings (where he played for a few years, about the time I was stocking up on his cards). I don't know if he was seen as too much of a players' coach, or if the well-run machine in Detroit seemed more appealing after the dysfunction down here, or what.

Brad McCrimmon's stats at HockeyDB
McCrimmon's profile at Hockey Draft Central
McCrimmon's profile at Legends of Hockey

#153 - Reijo Ruotsalainen

He's the possessor of one of the most melodious names in hockey history. I'm bad with languages, but Finnish is more befuddling to me than anything short of Mandarin -- but every once in a while it produces a name that's just really aesthetically pleasing and rolls off the tongue - Reijo Ruotsalainen. Say it a few times when you're stressed out -- it helps. Pekka Rautakallio is another.



"Rexi" was a small, quick defenseman who put up some decent point totals in the NHL and had really good timing. The Rangers dealt him to the Oilers (part of a seven-player trade) in October 1986, putting him in place to win the 1987 Stanley Cup. The next year, the Devils picked him up on waivers, but he was on his way to Sweden anyway -- he spent the next two years in Sweden and Switzerland. He came back with the Devils in 1989, but midway through the season the Oilers took him back on waivers, and bingo -- Cup #2. He scored 13 points in 22 playoff games for Edmonton that year, then went back to Europe to play out the string.

During the early to mid-1990s, he kept showing up on the Oilers' waiver availability list each year in the Hockey News -- I think he may have remained even after his European career ended. In the late '90s, he'd show up in a coaching or administrative position with random ECHL teams -- he was an assistant coach with the Miami Matadors, and did something with the New Orleans Brass as well, I think. Now he's an assistant coach (to former Quebec Nordiques coach Pierre Page) at Red Bull Salzburg in Austria.


Reijo Ruotsalainen's stats at HockeyDB
Reijo Ruotsalainen's profile at Legends of Hockey
Reijo Ruotsalainen's profile at Hockey Draft Central
Lowetide post with pic of Reijo