Cards at Target have confused me over the last several months… Well actually, blasters at Target have confused me over the last several months… Well actually, hockey blasters at Target have confused me over the last several months.
I got this box a while ago and just hadn’t gotten around to posting things. I was feeling the need for some hockey, partially because the season was closing out. But I also think it was because blasters of hockey cards were ALWAYS on the shelves. And that hasn’t changed at all. In a recent trip to Target there were more blasters on the shelves than there had been before.
Sure you might think those are for the 2022-23 season, but no. They still have a metric ton (see what I did there with the metric system – I think) of stuff from 2021-22. That’s what I mean by I don’t get it.
Let’s get to opening!
2021-22 O-Pee-Chee
While these are really just black and white (and maybe gray) cards, I like them. They aren’t like 1991 Leaf baseball cards or anything like that. They have that Topps Heritage style feel to them almost, maybe a little bit thinner. But I think the great colors of the hockey uniforms stick out well on these cards.
I happened to pick a few folks who were in the Stanley Cup finals for this first section. Of course Nathan MacKinnon came out on top over Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy this past season.
From The Garden
This is really what I like to find in these boxes. As I’ve said before, I’m not so much a hockey fan as I am a Rangers fan. I love watching hockey, especially playoff hockey, but I’m most familiar with the Blue Shirts players.
So it’s always nice to get some Rangers in a box. I think they’d look better in their blue uniforms, but I can’t complain. The Bread Man, Artemi Panarin, is a guy I love to watch of course. Filip Chytil on the other hand didn’t really have a great season, but he was really good in the playoffs.
Some Extras
I think they number all these League Leaders, Season Reviews and Marquee Rookies as parts of the main set and not really any special insert or anything like that. I always love the English/French angle on the O-Pee-Chee stuff too. It helps me keep up with my kids in their French classes… OK maybe not.
Even the Connor McDavid League Leader card you see is numbered within the regular set I think.
Small Ones and Colors
I love Tall Boy-Style cards as inserts. And these are definitely inserts. They are technically O-Pee-Chee Premier Tall Boys. I think the yellow Ovechkin is something like 1:4 in blasters, so pretty much a common insert variation. For some reason it makes me think of Ronald Acuna and those yellow accent pads he wears when it’s paired with the blue and red.
The blue Logan Thompson on the other hand is a parallel of course. I think it’s the most common parallel of all, which makes sense for a blaster.
Closing It Out
As always I keep a pack. This time around I got a couple blasters so overall I kept five packs which is my idea number. This was a fun blaster to open, but I feel like a lot of blasters are fun to open these days because I haven’t been opening too many of them. But this one gave me the urge to maybe look for some more hockey I might want to open this season as I root on my Rangers.