At first glance you may wonder why the heck I would choose this card as one of 'My Picks', but there's a good reason for it, I'll get to that in a minute. I looks like just another one of those cards with an awful off-ice shot that seemed to be a pretty common thing in the 90's.
It's a Ray Ferraro base card from 1994-95 Topps Stadium Club. This is one of the sets that were a key part of my collection as a kid. Back then all I could get were random grab bag boxes containing stuff from the mid 90's and I remember having a ton of these ones.
While it's not the greatest design in the world, mainly because of the randomly placed rectangles of red, blue, and green, it could have been worse. I do like that there is plenty of room left for the picture, even though some of them weren't the best. That said, this one is kind of unique.
Similar to the Patrick Kane pre-rookie card, seen here over at MHCO, this card features a potential future NHL'er as a young kid. According to Wikipedia, Ferraro has two sons from his first marriage, Matt born in 1988 and Landon in 1991. That leads me to believe those are the two featured on this card with their father. If someone knows otherwise, please let me know. There's a chance this could just be Ferraro posing with two random kids, in which case I'll look like an idiot for doing this pick.
If you're thinking so what, it's a guy and his two kids, why is that significant? Well, if you follow the Red Wings at all (or the draft really closely for that matter) then you probably know what I'm getting at. Landon was drafted by the Red Deer Rebels in 2006 and then the Detroit Red Wings in 2009 (2nd round, 32nd overall).
Ferraro is still in the farm system at this point, looking to make the team in Grand Rapids for the upcoming season. Hopefully he can do that and soon be wearing the winged wheel on the ice, making for another father/son combo to have made it in the NHL. Red Wings Central projects Ferraro as a second line center, so we'll just have to wait and see.
Besides the Patrick Kane, do you know of any other cards that feature NHL'ers as kids?
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