Book Review: Theo Fleury "Playing With Fire"

I got this book as a Christmas gift after putting it on my wish list. I heard that the book was great so I had to check it out for myself.

I almost gave up on the book after one page. The start is filled with swear words and foul language, which i don't enjoy. I decided to press on and I'm glad I did. The swears and foul language at times emphasis the struggles Fleury went through and the frustration he felt. The language is an important part of the book, you'd have to read it to understand!

I could not put this book down, it was very good. The book moves along at a great pace and does not stay on one stage of his life for too long. My favourite part of the book is when Fleury talks about certain players he played with. He rarely bashes anyone and if he does he tries to be nice as possible. When speaking of Alexandre Daigle he mentions that he was perhaps the fastest skater he played with and had an amazing set of skills. The only problem with him, Theo mentions is that he was not very intelligent.

The book also speaks of the dark side of his life and the struggles he has had with drugs and alcohol. Furthermore, Fleury also mentions his struggle with Graham James and the toll it took on him.  Fleury was very honest throughout the book, at the end he even mentioned that he did the book for money since he was broke. At book signings Fleury then realised that his book served as support to other's who had under gone sexual abuse and made them realise that they were not alone.

Where Are They Now #3: Tommy Soderstrom

While my "Where Are They Now" posts get no love, I'll continue to post them because quite frankly, I enjoy doing them!

As a kid Tommy Soderstrom was one of my favourite goalies. I liked his style, his weird equipment and that he put no tape on his stick blade!

Early in his career he found great success in Sweden and in international competition, he was even compared to Pelle Lindburgh. The Flyers lured him to North America in 1992 and he responded with a career high five shutouts in 44 games with a weak Phili team.

For the rest of his NHL career he struggled with heart problems, going under the knife five times. All of those times he returned to his team trying to find the success he had in his rookie season.

Soderstrom departed the NHL in the 1996-97 season with his last appearance; 10 seconds of relief duty with the Islanders. After five seasons in the NHL he returned to his native Sweden playing three more seasons. He retired in the 99-00 season.

I recently wrote Soderstrom in Sweden and asked him a few questions, mainly if he still played anymore and what he was up to. Soderstrom has not strapped on the pads since his retirement 10 years a goal, he gave up goaltending in 2000. Heis now the General Manager of a hockey team in Sweden, although he did not specify which one.

If anyone would like to write Tommy I will post his address below. He is a great signer and will respond quickly.

Tommy SoderstromOxelvägen 41
13832 Älta
Sweden

TTM Mail Day #2: Brian Bradley

I haven't sent out any requests for a few month's now. I grew frustrated by the lack of responses compared to the amount of money and time spent. In Sept, Oct, Nov I sent out at least 100 requests and only maybe 15-20 have rolled in. I'm an experienced vet so I sent to players with good success rates.

The Mail is coming later these days, usually at around 4PM, when it had arrived at 10am for half a year. I find the mail system usually switches up delivery times every so often and it's either really early or late. I prefer early since it gives me the chance to post up my mail day before I leave for work at around 1:30.

I sent to Bradley about a year ago and I finally got these back. He use to be a quick signer but has slowed down considerably now.

Bradley started his career with the Flames, Canucks and Leafs were he found very little success. He was then given a chance to star for the expansion Lightning and he found success. His career came to a pre-mature end due to injuries.

Brian Bradley
6417 MacLaurin Drive
Tampa, FL 33647-1171

Mail Day #6: Comics!!

I have been anxiously awaiting this mail day for over a week. I order my comics online from Horizon comics due to the incompetence at my local comic shop (don't want to get in to it). Horizon comics is great, they ship securely, fast and at affordable rates, consider most places charge absurd amounts to ship comics.

One of the ongoing comics I read is the Walking Dead. I started by watching the series and moved on to the comic. You can read most of them online on YouTube. I read the first 78 comics online in about a month. I could not stop reading, that's how great the comic is!

When I went to purchase the Walking Dead comic at a downtown shop for the first time I realised that it's dirt cheap ($2.99) and that it includes a lot of story with minimal advertisement's. I stopped reading comics back in 2003 due to the raising prices, lack of story in each issue and absurd amount of advertisements so it's nice to find a comic that has none of that negativity.

If you like the show, then I can assure that you will like the comic 100 times more!

The next comic I picked up was the second of a two part mini series. I'm not a fan of Bullseye and simply picked it up for the baseball content. To summarize briefly Bullseye is a hitman/detective for hire and he is hired to invesitage a case where a journeyman pro baseball pitcher was paid to throw a game and ends up pitching the game of his life. I won't go into anything more, read the comic!

I saved the best for last! The Uncle Scrooge series did a 8 issue run of Ducktales and sadly this is the last one before it goes back to being Uncle Scrooge. As a big Uncle Scrooge fan, I realised the main differences between the two series thanks to my advanced age. In Ducktales, Huey, Duey, Luey and Launchpad make more appearances. Secondly, in Ducktales they tend to go on bigger adventures then in Uncle Scrooge. While the nephews and Launchpad appear in Uncle Scrooge as well, it's not as frequent as in Ducktales.

While I'm upset the Ducktales run is over, the next Uncle Scrooge will be issue #400 and they will be featuring a double sized comic to commemorate the achievement.

Mail Day #5: Donruss Color Guard's

One of my better mail day's in a long time. I got these two cards in a trade for a Nik Kulemin FW AUTO.

Right before this set came out I managed to buy a PROMO Cujo card from a flea market for $10. Since then I have loved the desing of these cards. I want to complete the set although it might take some time. The better cards in the set like Potvin, Richter sell for the $8-$10 range on Ebay and the last Brodeur listed sold for $26.

I'm close to obtaining a Theodore in trade!

Pack Break #7: 2004 Pacific Hockey

I noticed this lone 2004 Pacific Hockey Pack at the Shoppers by my house and it had me thinking about Pacific, so that's what started my look into the end of the brand. I went back today to purchase the pack and originally thought it was the last series produced. When I broke the pack I realised it was the second last year of Pacific 03-04.

The base actually have a really nice design. I really liked that about Pacific, despite all the brands they had they really did a good job at switching up the product designs and keeping the cards interesting from year to year. I really feel that if Pacific hadn't tried to pump out so many different sets and had just stuck with the regular series, dynagon and Titanium, they may have found more success.

Each pack contains an insert and I managed to pull at Michael Cammalleri blue parallel 161/250. These parallel's are inserted 1:10 packs. I'm pretty happy with how I did in this pack and wished that Shoppers had more. I always enjoyed breaking Pacific product.

The Fall of a Trading Card Giant: Part 1

If you grew up collecting Hockey cards in the 90's then you should remember when Pacific started to produce hockey cards. At the time I was met with mixed emotions; I wasn't sure if I was ready for another brand producing hockey.

Despite my uncertainty, I busted some packs when the premiere 97-98 Pacific Hockey series was released. I remember not being overly blow away and adding them to my commons box. Over the next few month's I saw some of the crazy inserts collectors had been pulling from the product. Over the season Pacific released more product: Crown, Omega, Dynagon, Invincible and Paramount (hopefully I covered them all).

Pacific creativity was changing the collecting card market. They revolutionized the insert, parallels and low numbered inserts. When Upper Deck slowly began to phase in Jersey cards in the early 2000's and packaged them in boxes at ridiculous odds, Pacific was packaging at least one game used per box.

I google searched for Pacific and what happened to them but very minimal information came up, it was if the company did not exist. All I know is that in 2004, Donruss purchased the right to the Pacific trademark and stated that they did not intend to use the name any point soon but perhaps in the future. Later the Donruss names was purchased by Panini. Panini intends to released a Crown Royale set this year, a set named used by Pacific but is being marketed under the Panini name and not Pacific.

The last set produced by Pacific was 04-05 Hockey and after the company shut down for good. What I'm curious about is how did it get to that point? They had done so well for a period of time and somewhere something fell apart and it's not documented very well anywhere. I will do some research over the next little while to see what I can pull up.

Keep your eyes opened for Part 2, with more information and lot's of scans!