This is the year that changed everything in hockey. 2005-06 marked the first year of the 'new' hockey, resulting from the cancellation of a season of any of the 4 major North american Sports (Hockey, Baseball, Football and Baseketball). It was as though for the fans that the 2004-05 hockey year was the winter and 2005-06 the 'spring' of hockey season would arrive. While fans hibernated during 2004-05, the league and its business partners did not resulting in a 2005-06 season ready with nearly 2 years of fresh news, changes and players. Changes outside of the game occured at the end of the previous full season or during the lock out itself. Established television partners changed with a greater focus on the US market, new rules were brought into effect to speed up the play and encourage more goal scoring and the most talked about change being the elimination of tie games in favour of the shoot out. The incomming draft was in essence a double draft of players who would have been eligible for the 2004-05 draft which was never held and those normally eligible for the 05-06 season.
From the hockey card point of view, this was both a dark and a bright time for different reasons. The highly touted canadian rookie, Sidney Crosby, was regarded as the next Wayne Gretzky, much in the same way that Eric Lindros was glorified. His presence, as well as an exceptionall strong rookie class (due to the compacting of two years worth of talent) saw an explosion in hockey card purchasing, as well as box breaking and flipping for a profit. Times were also considered dark due to the exclusive licensing of NHL card products (see 04-05 for more details) to Upper Deck, which, while considered to often provide the best photographs of players in action, also had the dubious distinction of being the worst in terms of customer service and product reliability, often including 'redemptions' in products as well as occasionally producing cards with chips and/or factory damage. In 2003-04 ITG, Topps, Pacific and Upper Deck combined to release nearly 40 hockey products with Upper Deck accounting for 15 products alone. In the following lockout year, a total of 10 products were released, nearly equally split between Upper Deck and ITG. For the breakout year of 2005-06 and with the NHL license well in hand, Upper Deck produced a stagering 20 products, not including insert sets seeded in food, drinks or through magazine promotions while ITG released a poor showing of 2 full sets (along with 3 box sets).
As expected, Upper Deck's flasgship product, termed only Upper Deck Series 1 and 2, featured a 487 card set where rookies accounted for 17.6% of the cards. In terms of insert cards, the normal setup of two sets of 7 and two sets of 14 were used for both series 1 and series 2. One of the major expansions realized for this product included the catering of card packs to retail sellers like Target and Wal-mart. In order to meet the production demands for retail while keeping their brick and mortar purchasers satisfied a series of compromises were reached which were still seen in products released three years later. Base, rookie and occasionall inserts would seed at the same rate in both retail and 'hobby' boxes while more elusive cards such as game jerseys, autos and the like would be seeded in retail boxes at half the hobby rate, or would only be available through hobby boxes. To improve the collectibility of the retail product, a high seed, 30 card insert set would be included in retail boxes At a seed of 1 per pack, these 30 card insert sets would be completed as nearly the same rate as a base set. In contrast, the insert sets out of 7 or 14 normally require a minimum of 7 hobby boxes to be completed. Of the 10 insert sets to be produced (4 in Series 1, 4 in Series 2 and 2 Retail exclusive sets), the devision between classical and modern designs would be handled cleverly resulting in 5 sets having a classical look and 5 having a moderm look. Two of the sets in Series 1 would feature a classical design (Goal Rush and Playoff Performers) as well as the retail set (Hockey Scrapbook) while Series 2 would have only two of its insert sets with the classical design (Destined for the Hall and Goal Celebrations). The modernly desgined insert sets would include School of Hard Knocks in series 1 (see 04-05 for the previous incarnation of this set's design), Goal Celebrations, Stars in the Makind and Diary of a Phenom (retail insert set) in Series 2. Finally, a novel, highly collected series spanning insert set termed Hometown Heroes was introduced with numbering 1-14 for Series 1 and 15-28 in Series 2.
With the focus of the NHL directed south, the 'Canadian Exclusives' seen in 04-05 were replaced with the normal 'Exclusives' numbered to 100 as well as High Glossy cards numbered to 10, abandoning the Gold and Silver distinctions. Revamped game jersey designs were introduced where the jersey piece and player were portrayed length wise along the card, rather than having the designs stand upright, a feature which was used for all jersey containing pieces in the set. Along with the regular single player jersey cards and patches for both series, Generations Duals and Triple game used cards were seen in Upper Deck Series 1. The 'Big Playmakers' subset was revisted in series 1 using the letter 'BP' to highlight the jersey piece (similar to the 03-04 Big playmakers pieces in the shape of a 'B') and was used in a similar fashion in series 2 with the 'Majestic Materials' with jersey pieces in the letter 'M'. A well recieved autograph set featuring short printed autographs to a player's jersey number was introduced for current NHL players in Series 1 and for 05-06 NHL rookies in Season 2. For examples of the notable numbers cards, please visit my 'Closest Goalies' collection for the 05-06 year. The only jersey autographs offered in the release was a 58 card subset of rookie jersey autographs numbered to 75 for the more common rookies and 10 for the more famous rookies. To round out the set and encourage the chance to pull rookies, Victory rookie cards were offered as an update to the 05-06 Victory set and seeded at 1 per pack.
Immediately after the lockout, I, along with many other hockey card collectors, were somewhat hockey card starved which resulted in a massive buying spree which many have come to regret. Among a few other more expensive sets I attempted to complete (and either failed or gave up with the ensuing glut of Upper Deck prodcuts), I'm happy to say that I did manage to complete the Masters set for this product. As always, Upper Deck remains a well designed set with inspired base card photography. When deciding on my well designed subset of the year, I felt that i had to choose a subset within Upper Deck Series 1 or 2. After pulling the NHL generations triple of Primeau/Clarke/Gagne in my series 1 breaks and a Majestic Materials in series 2 I originally attmepted to complete the NHL generations triples and Majestic Materials sets. After some time, and the punishing chceklist of Majestic Materials in Series 2, I decided to scale back and simply collect the better designed NHL generations triple. while I am still short of my goal by 1 card, I hope to finish this set soon.
Base & Young Guns:
Inserts:
Well Designed Subset: