Friday, August 26, 2011

Conditioning Camp Observations

I drove over to Raleigh Center Ice today to watch the Hurricanes conditioning camp. It's ironic that the camp is now referred to as "Camp Rosie" because Chad LaRose was not in attendance. In his absence, it looked like Bryan Allen was directing the skating drills. Other than the two goaltenders (Cam Ward and Brian Boucher) the other players in attendance were all relatively young: Allen, Jamie McBain, Justin Faulk, Patrick Dwyer, Drayson Bowman, Jerome Samson, Jiri Tlusty, Anthony Stewart, Zac Dalpe, and Jon Matsumoto. Former Hurricane Bates Battaglia also was participating. Out of the group, Dalpe was definitely the most impressive. As I mentioned earlier, I think he'll have a breakout season and be the Hurricanes top rookie. As a result, I'm been paying a lot of attention to his cards on eBay. I recently picked up his UD Young Guns rookie card since this was one of the more popular Jeff Skinner rookie cards (In general, I think the UD Young Guns rookie cards are considered to be the best non-jersey, non-autographed, rookie cards each year.

I also recently won a great auction on eBay for a lot of 50 recent Hurricanes cards. My primary purpose for bidding was because a lot of Hurricanes pre-season events are coming up and I needed some cards to get autographed. Included among the cards were: Eric Staal, Tuomo Ruutu, Chad LaRose, Jussi Jokinen, Joni Pitkanen, Cam Ward, Brandon Sutter, Tim Gleason, Zach Boychuk, Drayson Bowman, Patrick Dwyer. Also included were former Hurricanes: Joe Corvo, Rod Brind'Amour, Matt Cullen, Ray Whitney, Manny Legace, Erik Cole, Ian White. My favorite among the lot is this UD Retro Cam Ward - not only are these retro cards cool, but they are also great for autographs since they don't have a glossy surface.

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