By Kevin Lee
Our first piece is a real flashback to the original Ottawa Senators team. It comes courtesy of Murray Pam (@Pammerhockey), a freelancer for The Hockey News, who also writes a weekly Sens column in the Metro. He tries to collect rare items for his collection, and this one fits the bill. During the years 1929 to 1932, the La Presse newspaper ran colored photos featuring popular athletes at the time. Browsing a Civic Centre card show in 1992, Murray ended up buying this Hec Kilrea Player of the Week page from December 28th, 1928 for $25. It is now valued at approximately $125, and a piece that I'm sure very few Sens fans own.
Returning to the modern day incarnation of the Ottawa Senators, we get this opening night coin from October 8th, 1992 from Stu Coutu (@StuCoutu). His uncle attended that historic game for business, but not caring much for hockey passed on the coin to Stu as a give last year. Definitely something that will only grow in value as the years go by!
From Lindsay (@McSens21) we get the certificate from that same opening game that was given to everyone to mark their attendance that night.
Now from my own personal collection is a pair of posters given out by the Ottawa Citizen during the 1998 playoffs, where the Sens upset the #1 seeded New Jersey Devils. That playoff run also marks one of the best marketing campaigns done by the Sens... Woo Hoo!
Jumping back to Lindsay's collection, she provided two newspaper covers from arguably one of the most worrisome times in Ottawa Senators history. The first is dated December 2nd 1999 and the other January 14th, 2000.
From Patrick Bazinet (@PatBaz9) we get this uncut sheet of 2000-2001 Ottawa Senators team issued 4x6 hockey cards. Usually these cards are given to players to sign during their autograph sessions. They are not readily available, and putting together every year's collection is a challenging task.
Our last piece comes from Andrew Sztein (@AndrewSztein). It's a poster from the home opener during the 2001-2002 season (the Sens 10th anniversary) that features a headshot from every player to play on the Ottawa Senators from 1992-2002. It's also personally autographed by Chris Phillips and Mike Fisher. Phillips signed it "Good Luck Andrew" when Andrew told him he was trying to get into writing as a career. He has since finished that novel, no doubt thanks to the inspirational words from the Big Rig!
That's all for this edition of Sens Collectors and I hope you enjoy this and future editions feature. To keep it going, I need your help. If you have anything unique you want to share, contact me on Twitter at @BringBackLee or an email to sensforlife11@hotmail.com. Looking forward to hearing from some of you. Until then, thanks for reading!