Hockey Brings the Metal
That time of year again. Here in Alaska lakes are starting to freeze. Last weekend I pulled my skates out of storage, taped up my chipped stick and donned my Sidney Crosby Inaugural Winter Classic baby-blue jersey.
This season hockey fever even spread into my writing. I'm midway through a short story about a secret game played every New Year's day on a different lake in the Wisconsin woods.
I don't buy packs very often. But it's time to score the one blaster box I enjoy every year - Upper Deck Skybox Metal Universe Hockey.
Since returning to the hobby three years ago, Metal Universe is by far my favorite set. I stopped buying boxes of cards in 1995. After 25 years off, my first eBay purchases were the flashy basketball singles designed by Marvel artists.
The top card was Marc Jackson dropping dimes in autumn leaves. My daughter snapped it up like she was playing jacks. I tried to hide the next two - Kenny Anderson holding his dribble in a cauldron of lava and Rod Strickland euro-stepping in a pit of marbles.
After picking up 23 hoops singles from the famous 1997 set, I won a 25-card lot of football on eBay. Gorgeous cards. Eric Moulds evading lightning strikes in a smoldering forest, Adrian Murrel bursting through barbed brambles, Terrance Mathis squeezing an electric reception against a wavy teal sea tinged with pink twilight.
Victory followed with an 18-card baseball lot of cyborgs and astro-nautical batsmen. Mike Piazza with bionic biceps. Bare-handed Vlad Guerrero bashing meteorites to bits. The Big Unit, arm cocked against a mountain-pierced sky, zapped by a robotic spider. This lot included a lot of doubles. I mailed some out to friends to let them know the future was then.
Hoops, football and baseball each only got one set of Metal Universe. Just one edition of those classic emeralds and rubies that, one could argue, changed the game.
These days, Hockey, on the other hand, puts out a new Metal Universe set every year! What a treat!
Hockey seems the best aesthetic match for this galactic set. A sport taking place on ice feels extra-terrestrial. Hockey is more blue-collar than other sports. And the equipment - sticks, skates, pads, helmets - like tools brought to the job site with one's lunch pail.
Post game, after guys have punched out, and with all their gear removed, many pros could be mistaken for regular guys - factory workers perhaps. Metal comes into play a lot in hockey. Sharpening skates ("Blades of Steel"). Pucks pinging the post. The boards. Glass.
When I open these packs I'm not looking for anything in particular. I'm just looking. Ready to be impressed. Each card doesn't always have a unique design with comic book style machines or beasts or natural disasters. But the sci-fi aesthetic is catchy. And the bright uniforms against the cosmos really pop.
Chasing base seems to be a good mark for what blaster box to buy. Going after gettable cards. Saving these pack-ripped singles helps me collect the same way I did as a kid who went after Donruss Diamond Kings, Sport Flicks, Wade Boggs cards and commons to complete sets.
Ripping a 1990 box of Score Hockey a couple seasons ago felt like playing hooky. Catching a Marty Brodeur rookie out of the gate set me off on a #1 Draft Pick quest. These include the bonus of also kind of collecting those classic ballcaps they're sporting. With hockey you can get a solid collection of mullets going too.
Catching Score cards of Gretzky, Neely, Roenick, Lafontaine and Modano took me back to announcing such names in my driveway when my friends and I impersonated them in penalty shot contests. And more obscure names - Kron, Dollas, Dejoos - of guys we discovered far down rosters in Sega Genesis's classic NHL '94 game.
Do modern Metal Universe Hockey cards also check-off that nostalgic mystique I seek?
I think so, in a major way. Intergalactic puck harks back to the 97 editions of hoops, football and baseball. Packs that, back in the day, I would've bought up like Garbage Pail Kids and (Swedish Fish) if I had stayed in the game.
Making up for lost time. Or in search of it.