Thursday, September 21, 2017

Tretiak Pads and Stick

Vladislav Tretiak has been a hero of mine ever since I read his book Tretiak The Legend. While I never had the chance to see him play live and his playing days were long over before I started watching hockey, I still to this day wonder how well he would have fared in the NHL during his prime. During his career he is the most successful international goaltender of all-time with 3 Olympic Gold Medals, 10 World Championship Gold Medals and 1 Canada Cup.  With that being said, there is no denying he had a great team in front of him for all of those wins and even many of their losses but fact of the matter is there is no doubt in my mind he is truly an amazing athlete and a hockey genius who has impacted the lives of many players including another favourite Ed Belfour.

My collection never reflected my passion for Tretiak and in the past couple years I have been fortunate to acquire a few more relics to my collection. Here are two that I haven't shared as of yet and are among my collection favourites!


08-09 ITG Between the Pads Super Sized Pads Vladislav Tretiak V-1of1
This amazing piece was released as part of the Final Vault and is perhaps one of the finest relic cards I have ever seen or owned. Having had a chance to touch his goal pads and feel the leather and history is truly fun in itself but to own it is even better. While I feel confident to say this likely isn't from his '72 Series Goalie Pads, there is at least a strong chance the pads were worn during a championship run which in itself is just fantastic.


14-15 Leaf Stickwork Game Used Goalie Paddle Vladislav Tretiak /40
My second piece I am sharing is a piece of his goal stick which does include some portion of the brand name. Tretiak used primarily two types of goal sticks during his career they were Montreal and Koho both of which were brown sticks with black writing so I don't really have any way of guessing which one of the two this might have come from but I at least can be sure the stick type was correct for the card.

That's all for today's post, I now have a PC of 4 Tretiak cards plus a few from the '72 Summit Series set that was released in the early 90's. I hope to someday maybe try and track down some of his rare and obscure cards but for now these are amazing enough for this collector. Thanks for stopping by!




6 comments:

  1. Holy crap, that pad card is one of the most interesting cards I’ve seen. Simply amazing Dave!

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  2. Okay so I liked the card SO much that you inspired me to go land a "Super-Sized Pads" card of my own! Can't wait for it to arrive, and will certainly post it and link back to here!

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  3. Sweet cards! I don't have either of these relics, but I did pick up an autograph of Tretiak. He was a little before my time as well... but the guy is a hockey icon.

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  4. I second the pad card. That's pretty unique!

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  5. Awesome couple of cards. I've never seen a pads card before. Very cool.

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  6. Thanks so much guys!! Even after all this time they are still some of my more favourite relic cards in my collection.

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