Thursday, August 25, 2011

Cardboard Creations: Last Line of Defense

Lately my custom card sets have featured current goaltenders, mainly because I like to keep things consistent and it's a lot easier to find current photos these days. That said, this set is a bit different. It's called 'Last Line of Defense' which I know isn't all that original, but it works, and it will feature both past and present goaltenders.

Now, as you probably know I'm a Red Wings fan and I love goalies. Well, this set is all about those two things. After reading Michael's last goalie project post over at Collecting for Kicks, I thought it would be neat to do something similar with the Wings. Then I thought about it for a second, and that would pretty much be impossible, so I decided I wanted to just create my own cards, especially for some of the old timers.

This first one is an example of a guy whose RC would be pretty hard to come by, at least for me. As far as the design, I started with the vertical card template, added the circular cutout, and kind of just ran with it from there. The shield logo in the middle is something I happen to stumble upon and I thought it would look good and kind of go along with the whole last line of defense idea.


The background is just a generic fractal I found on Google. Beyond that I added the corner elements just to break up the background a little bit. You may also notice the font looks familiar, that's because it's the same one I used on my recent 'Frontmen' custom set.

The one thing I did want to do was add the years in which each goaltender played with the Wings. For some this will be just a year and others it will be two or three stints kind of like Terry Sawchuk or Dominik Hasek.

Obviously Detroit being an Original Six team means they have had a ton of goaltenders over the years. According to The Goalies Archive, the Red Wings have had 84 different goaltenders between 1932 and 2011. That's including the current group of Howard, McCollum, Conklin, and MacDonald though, so my set will probably consist of the 79 former goaltenders, everyone from Sawchuk to Osgood.

Here are the first nine of them together:


As you can see, I've got a variety of goaltending eras from Detroit's history represented here. I've got every decade since the 40's covered in this group. Since I'm only 22 though, I've only had the pleasure of seeing five of these guys actually play (Legace, Joseph, Hasek, Ranford, and Osgood). I know of the rest, I just never had the chance to see them play.

Now that I've got the design down, I'm working on the next group of nine. The hardest part is finding quality images for some of the older goaltenders, especially the ones that only played a handful of games for the Wings.

So what do you guys think? Any suggestions for goalies I should include in the next nine?

9 comments:

  1. Mike Vernon and maybe a futures card with Thomas McCollum.
    Great idea

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  2. Vernon's a good one, I'll have to add him. And I like the idea of a 'Futures' subset or something (with McCollum, Pearce, etc).

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  3. very neat idea...good luck with it. Gotta go with Vernon

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  4. these look really good. kind of like the opening to a James Bond film...

    How about Bob Suave? And two of the more famous Red Wing goalies, Ron Low and Jimmy Rutherford.

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  5. Your favorite goalie is Jimmy Howard and yet you did not make a card of his. But maybe add Glenn Hall or Harry Lumley for this set and Tim Cheveldae works too.

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  6. These cards remind me of the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies.

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  7. Also, I'd love to see Red Wings goalie cards of Alain Chevrier, Greg Millen and Sam St. Laurent.

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  8. These are very cool!

    I'd say Roger Crozier, Greg Stefan and I'd second Hall and Lumley.

    I actually have a John Ross Roach Wings card, though there's not a ton left in the image.

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  9. Tim Cheveldae, now there's a name I heard thrown around a lot as a kid. Nice customs, very well done.

    Remember Kevin Hodson? I remember during a post game interview after he earned a shutout where he joked that he had learned everything he knew about goaltending from playing an EA Sports video game. I'll always remember that heh

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