This has to be a mistake

Not that I'm complaining or anything, but after pulling 85 Young Guns out of a box of 2008-09 Upper Deck Hockey Series 2 one can only wonder what in the Gordie Howe is going on in North Las Vegas.

That's right, one box produced eighty-freaking-five Young Guns. I've heard of hot boxes. This box, hand-picked from three offered at the House of Cards in Pinellas Park, Fla., was a near-meltdown within the Young Guns 50-card franchise.

Even better, I have no clue how it happened. It just did. Divine intervention? Mechanical gremlins? A mischievous collator? Who knows?

Just look at the numbers:

~ 48: Number of different rookie cards
~ 44: Percentage of Young Guns cards within the 192 cards in the box
~ 6: Number of Young Guns cards per box, on average, according to Upper Deck
~ 14: Number of boxes, using Upper Deck's averages, it would take to accumulate 85 Young Guns
~ $68.47: What I paid for the box

My only complaint? One would think a full set could have been culled from the 85. Nope. Didn't happen; 48 out of the 49 players, plus the checklist. Atlanta's Nathan Oystrick was the healthy scratch.

Now, look at some of the cards:

Four-banger

I know Islanders fans have high hopes for Josh Bailey, probably just as much as teammate Kyle Okposo, but this is downright ridiculous:

Ironic there's a short-print (098/100) in the mix, isn't it?

Hat tricks

Why, oh, why couldn't this have happened in any of the Series 1 boxes? Maybe I would've scored a Young Gun for Tampa Bay's Steven Stamkos (hint, hint, hint)?

A pair of goalies -- Toronto's Justin Pogge and Washington's Simeon Varlamov -- showed up three times.

Duplicate efforts

The largest subset, there were two cards each for 29 players:

Doubles (from left): Washington's Karl Alzner, Carolina's Zach Boychuk, Los Angeles' Brian Boyle and Dallas' Fabian Brunnstrom

More doubles (from left): Columbus' Nikita Filatov and Dan LaCosta, and Vancouver's Cory Schneider

Not shown, but noteworthy: Anaheim's Andrew Ebbett and Brett Festerling, Atlanta's Boris Valabik, Carolina's Patrick Dwyer, Dwight Helminen and Justin Peters, Columbus' Derek Dorsett, Edmonton's Theo Peckham, Florida's Jason Garrison and Michael Repik, Los Angeles' Danny Taylor, the Isles' Mitch Fritz and Brett Skinner, New Jersey's Patrick Davis, Matthew Halischuk and Petr Vrana, Ottawa's Jesse Winchester, Philadelphia's Darroll Powe, Phoenix's Kevin Porter, Pittsburgh's John Curry, San Jose's Tom Cavanaugh and Washington's Tyler Sloan

One-per players

Besides Oystrick, it's my guess these are the Young Guns' toughies:

Top row: St. Louis' Ben Bishop, Toronto's Jonas Frogren and Buffalo's Nathan Gerbe
Middlow row: Toronto's Nikolai Kulemin, Carolina's Joe Jensen and New Jersey's Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond
Bottom row: San Jose's Jamie McGinn, Columbus' Andrew Murray and Philadelphia's Andreas Nodl

Top row: Florida's Kendal McArdle, Edmonton's Steve MacIntire, Pittsburgh's Janne Pesonen and Los Angeles' Teddy Purcell
Bottom row: Colorado's Chris Stewart, San Jose's Brad Staubitz, Phoenix's Viktor Tikhonov and the Young Guns checklist, showing Dallas' Fabian Brunnstrom, Tikhonov and Columbus' Nikita Filatov