Two great pulls last week

Two different customers pulled the following cards last week:

2007-08 SPX Flashback Fabrics Sidney Crosby Autographed Jersey/Patch #/25

2007 Leaf Limited Adrian Peterson Autographed Patch #/25

Congratulations to the two owners of these cards.

If you have bought a box from us, send us a picture or stop by the store with the card and we'll take a picture of the card and add it to our "Wall of Fame".

Twinsfest

Twinsfest 2008 is now complete. We had a great show and got to meet lots of new people. Thanks to everyone that stopped by. Hopefully you picked up a flyer for the store. The show itself was great. We sold a lot of cards as well as some Adrian Peterson autographed memorabilia.

2006 Playoff NFL Playoffs case break

Just posted a case break of this on the Box Breaks section of our web site. We also have these tins available in store. A full description of the product and what was in the case is on the web site. The highlights included a Vince Young autograph!

Random Sport Related thoughts

As I'm finally getting a chance to watch a Gophers Basketball game, a few thoughts, comments, questions have popped into my mind.....

Is the Gophers Basketball team really this good?

Is the Gopher Hockey team really as bad as they have been playing? Do they have a realistic chance for home ice in the playoffs?

If the Packers beat the Giants this weekend, do they have any chance to beat the Patriots?

Do the Wild have the guts to pull the trigger and make a trade before the deadline? Would this still be Naegle's pocketbook or Liepold's? That fact makes a HUGE difference.

Are the Timberwolves still relevant in the Twin Cities? Will they be again?

Are the Vikings? The Twins if/when they lose Santana?

Just some thoughts...maybe I'll have answers posted some day.

Wild Three Stars of the Week

So I'm a few days behind, but here are my Three Stars for the last week of play by the Wild.

#3 Star
Josh Harding...from when he entered the game to relieve Backstrom against the Redwings, he had some ridiculous number of saves, something like 91 of 93 (I'm off a bit with the numbers, but it was truly ridiculous. Word is he tweeked his groin before the game against the Flames last night, hopefully he will be back in the net tomorrow against the Ducks.

#2 Star
Marian Gaborik...7 points in his last 7 games, named the NHL's #1 star for the 2nd time in 4 weeks. Enough said.

#1 Star
The Wild's 4th line -- James Shepherd, Todd Fedoruk and yes, I'm really typing this Matt Foy. I dogged Foy last week, but I'm taking my words as his motivation to pick up his play ;-). But this line has shown great chemisty, had points in each of the last few games, and I'm guessing for the first time in Fedoruk's career he was a plus 7 after the three games.

Adrian Peterson and Brian Rolston

In store news, we now have Adrian Peterson autographed memorabilia for sale. We have 8x10" photos, 16x20" photos, mini-helmets, footballs and jerseys! You can stop in and pick out the item you want at the store, or wait for Twinsfest. All items come with a Certificate of Authenticity.

The Wild lost in a shootout tonight. I'd love to see a stat about how many times Brian Rolston has done something other than wind up and take a slapshot in a shootout. He is 9/21 in his career, but about 1/10 when I have seen him.

Three Stars of the Month

We just added a Three stars of the Month feature on our web site. Shockingly, Marian Gaborik won the award as the Number One star for January.

If Matt Foy keeps things up, he may earn consideration for February.

Second Week and First Show Completed

The second week is (almost) complete at the store. We also attended our first show today, a show at the American Legion in Waite Park Minnesota. Eric will hopefully post a full show report later!

Thanks to all of those who have stopped by! We are still working on getting everything out, so we encourage you to check in frequently. Just to clarify, our credit card machine is now working fine. Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express are accepted. If you are looking for something we don't have, let us know and we'll get it for you.

If you have anything you are looking to sell or trade, we are always buying and trading. For those of you that open a lot of boxes, we'll even buy or trade for your base cards from recent sets. Email Wayne (wayne@threestarssportscards.ocm) for details.

Knights Hockey Review

Hello out there. I am going to attempt to use the space to provid updates of the Knights hockey team. The Knights play hockey in D2 of the AHA hockey in the twin cities of Minnesota. D2 is not to be confused with the college level of D2 and if you saw us play you'd have no problem there. We are half way through our season. Our record stands at 3-6-1, 7th place out of ten and a full nine points out of the last playoff spot. That may sound dismal, but we are on pace for a better season than we've had in like the last 4 or 5 years. Truth be told, we have a lot of talent for the level we are in, but we always underachieve. We often don't try hard. We have a fondness for repeated mistakes. We often have injured guys and are good for about two suspensions a year. A lot of our problems result from our leadership. But we have a great locker room and I love skating with this team. A lot of guys on the team have been here for years and we've seen plenty of marriages and growing families. We also had some great new people on the team and they fit in well. I will try to post updates after each game and will begin our most recent game. It was this past Sunday and we were thumped 5-0 by the first place Gold Rush. Although the game got away from us in the third we were close for most of the game. We had many decent scoring chances but just did not finish. (Sometimes common for the Knights.) I had a very Skoula like night on D. I was on the ice for three of their goals and in the box (very weak call) for one of them. I had a few turnovers and cement skate plays, other than that I was ok. Oh well, we get to play them again. More later.

Marian Gaborik the All-Star

Congratulations to Marian Gaborik for making his second All-Star team. He celebrated by having a goal and an assist in regulation and the winner in the shootout. Gaborik is extremely streaky. The shootout winner will hopefully boost his confidence and allow him into future shootouts. He has been playing well for the last few weeks (with a couple exceptions) and could have a huge second half.

When are the Wild going to put Matt Foy on waivers?

So the Wild finally made their roster move to make space for Mikko Koivu, and what do they do, they waive Dominic Moore. While I'll admit I am not the biggest fan of Dominic Moore and he has sat quite a bit this year, when is the Wild every going to waive Matt Foy?

I think a statement from a conversation Wayne and I had with one of our favorite hockey card people, Baron Bedesky, should sum it up: "Foy should be a career minor leaguer."

Really, what skill does he bring? Yes he always tries really hard, but that will only get you so far. The Wild need someone to put the puck in the net or set up the other players for goals, Foy has not shown he is capable of that at the NHL level. (Has Moore either? But his play doesn't bother me as much as Foy's does.)

Foy's stats over the past few years (thank you NHL.com):

Season

Team

GP

G

A

P

+/-

PIM

PP

SH

GW

Shots

Pct

2005-2006

Wild

19

2

3

5

-4

16

1

0

0

21

9.5

2006-2007

Wild

9

0

0

0

-1

4

0

0

0

6

0.0

2007-2008

Wild

17

2

2

4

-2

22

0

0

1

19

10.5

Not too much action or production. And if he could just skate into the zone without turning over the puck once or twice, that would be helpful too.

I guess I'm left crossing my fingers he is waived when Boogaard is ready to come back.

Russian Hockey Fight!

Hockey made SportsCenter!