International Flavour

Sometimes packs have an unintended theme to theme. Well, maybe unintended isn't correct because I doubt the machines sorting them ever have any intentions to begin with, but either way, when opening a pack sometimes the theme seems to be there.

Iginla will always be known for his 2010 Olympic winning goal fed to him by Crosby - not a bad highlight for an international career. 

Kyle Calder had a stud year at the 1999 Canada Under 20 international tournament.

Surprisingly, the Czech team had much of its success without Jagr in the late 90s and early 2000s, though he did end up with a gold medal at the 2004 world championships.

The parallel today is of a man who could have had a very different international career. Brett was a dual Canada/US citizen, so could have played for either team at the 1986 WOrld Hockey Championships, however, he was overlooked by Team Canada and not invited, though team USA invited him and he ended up having a stellar tournament with 7 goals and 4 assists for the 6th place Americans.

It may not have been the best showing for the team, but their faith in Brett had him play the rest of his international career with the US. It would be interesting to know how tournaments would have turned out if Brett was instead on Team Canada.

Though I don't think this was ever a case of preferring one country over the other (as Brett was driven more simply by the desire of simply playing), he started catching flack from Canadian fans in the later 90s, first being called a traitor at the '96 World Cup of Hockey which was in Canada, then with early elimination from the '98 Olympics for the Americans followed by a denied scandal on hotel room destruction, it was not always a wonderful relationship between Brett over his international play choice, and Canada.

Personally, I do always think of him as American, fairly or not, because of his choice and time spent only on the American side internationally - but I never really think of him as a Red Wing.

17 Packs, 119 Cards, 535 Points.