Outside the norm

Though we added only six signatures to the Slovakian team jersey over the 2008-09 hockey hounding campaign, it's hard to complain when Detroit's Marian Hossa is one of them. It's too bad, though, that Big Poppa Pump's distinctive signature, one of 11 collected on the jersey over the past two NHL seasons, is a bit sloppy.

While Canadian and USA jersey projects are popular, as well as those for Czech Republic, Finnish Russian and Swedish players, this particular effort represents another solid expansion of a project that's just outside the mainstream of hockey collecting.

Here's who signed over the past season during visits to Hockey Bay:

~ Colorado's Peter Budaj and Marek Svatos;
~ Detroit's Hossa and Tomas Kopecky;
~ Montreal's Jaroslav Halak; and
~ Tampa Bay's Andrej Meszaros.

Next season, we'll be looking to add, at the least, Buffalo's Andrej Sekera and Washington's Milan Jurcina. The list will grow, I presume, once the Lightning's 2009-10 schedule is released and I can run through rosters.

Likely candidates, based on my best guesses, would include Edmonton's Lubomir Visnovsky, Los Angeles' Michal Handzus, Minnesota's Marian Gaborik and Branko Radivojevic, and Vancouver's Pavol Demitra. Tampa Bay's Vladimir Mihalik seems like a lock, too.