Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Happy Belated Birthday To The Devils Greatest Coach...

Leading all head coaches in Devils history with wins it's Jacques Lemaire with 276 wins in the regular season plus a Stanley Cup in 1995 as head coach. As much as I loved all the Devils Cup wins, the first one was probably the most memorable and important as it turned our franchise from a Mickey Mouse one to a legitimate organization. This past week was Jacques' 71st birthday and I hope he is having a good time as the Special Assignment Coach with the Leafs. 

2012-13 ITG Forever Rivals Autos Jacques Lemaire

Oddly missing from my collection for a very long time was Lemaire's auto. I have autos from pretty much every member of that Cup winning team except the head coach (perhaps a few others I really should check). I came across this about 7-8 months ago at the LCS when the owner said he got a huge binder of these in and was looking to move them. I'm sure I could have found a home for all of them but this was the only one I bought. Now that I have this one crossed off, it takes care of part of my HOF project with him and my informal "let's get all the '95 Devils autos".

The card itself is a nice on card auto in red ink. I don't have many red ink autos but given it's the main colour for the Devils and Habs I believe it's very appropriate to use it on this card. In all this was a very well done product by ITG despite no license. As the years have gone by I have been less and less into ITG for reasons I am not too sure of. Leaf seems to be running the ship and oddly I see less and less of their stuff in the LCS and in the media in general. Have you noticed that too? Or is it just where I live and it's more prevalent in the USA now? I'm curious to hear your thoughts and as always, thanks for stopping by.

4 comments:

  1. That's a beauty Dave! You should definitely take a look at the roster of that Stanley Cup team and see what you still need for autos, sounds like a fun project (and set of blog posts!).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks and Shane that's a great idea. I am going to have to do some digging but from what I initially saw I am pretty close.

      Delete
  2. Nice card! I'm curious about your 1995 Devils autos- are they all card company certified like this one, or are some in-person/TTM? I once had a 01-02 Fleer Greats Lemaire auto and I was fascinated by his signature; it looked like "eeeeeeee" lol.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Chris! From the ones I have at the moment, it is various companies, mostly certified but a few are TTM or ones other people got in person. I'm not super picky like some collectors but I could see some striving for a card company one for their collection.

      That sounds like a pretty cool card, I love the look of that set.

      Delete