The story behind all this

I've been a hockey nut since as far as I can remember. The classic canadian boys' story : on skates at age 5, hiding at the top of stairs to watch the rest of the game after I'd been told to go to bed, getting frostbyte on my ear lobes after spending the day at the rink in minus 20 celcius weather, standing 5 hours in line to buy playoff tickets to the Senators, glued to the TV every night during the playoffs. Standard stuff (sort of ...)

However, amazingly enough, I never owned a single pro team jersey. I just never did. I did own a bunch of jerseys for pickup hockey, but nothing from the big leagues.

Recently, in my wandering eBay clickery, I came across a Cleveland Barons jersey, and it caught my eye for some unknown reason, I put in a bid and won, and I caught the bug. Now, I'm constantly keeping an eye out for a find.

I'm mostly interested in road jerseys, defunct teams and otherwise "interesting" jerseys (really ugly, like the Sharks, or good looking, like the Capitals 80s jersey). I'm not interested in game-worn jersey (too rich for my blood!) or signed jerseys (too much fraud in that world!).

Anyways, I'm a computer programmer by trade, so putting my collection on the web was a natural. I was going to put up my stack of old jersey pictures, but I found plenty of resources on the web to "authenticate" vintage jerseys. An excellent place to start is Drop The Pucks. They have a staggering collection of jersey pictures - it's probably the only place to visit.

Phil and the Stanley Cup
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This is me at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. I didn't want to touch the cup, because I didn't earn it. I was offended by all the yahoos putting their mitts on the Hallowed Silver. Yes, I take this WAY too seriously. :) More Hall of Fame pics.