The ITC Hockey Card collection started after the 1999/2000 season. I wanted to include some images of Manchester Storm players on the site but I wanted to do this in a slightly different way then just a gallery of pictures and so I came up with using the hockey card format to do this. The original intention was to design one card and use a different colour combination on this to indicate whether that Storm player was a current squad member or was no longer with the Storm. In fact the first cards added followed this rule. It became clear pretty quickly that this wasn’t going to work as well as I had wanted it to so I decided on a switch to a year by year approach to help with the organisation of the cards on the site. Once this had been decided I designed a different border for each year’s card to make each series instantly recognisable. Suddenly, what had been an ‘alternative’ way of displaying some images became a daunting task - on a year by year basis the task isn’t that big but I had five years to cover and so the work began...... The ITC Manchester Storm Online Hockey Card Collection now includes over 300 cards spread over 7 different series (one for each season - Series 1 to 6 are all complete), 4 limited subsets covering the Storm’s two major trophy wins (ISL and B&H) and two of my favourite Storm players (Frank Pietrangelo and Brad Rubachuk) and the Storm Stars ‘hall of fame’ type feature. By January 2001, the coverage of the NHL team that I follow - Pittsburgh Penguins - on the site was rivalling that of the Storm and I added a section to the site dedicated to them, The Igloo. A big part of this section was to be a Penguins collection of cards. Again, the initial intention was just to add a few Penguins images in a different format and while a year by year approach for the Penguins history would be impossible (2001/02 season is their 35th anniversary!) a new card has been designed for this year. Following feedback from friends in a Penguins discussion group I belong to, this part of the ITC Hockey Card collection was extended to cover the Penguins AHL farm team - Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. The addition of a few subsets covering the Pens Stanley Cup wins, netminders of the Pens, Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr’s Penguins career mean that the Pens cards on the site now number 184 with more to come on a regular basis. With close to 500 cards spread across the Storm and Penguins cards, what started off as a different way of including some images on the site has become the major feature of the site and something I have yet to find duplicated elsewhere on another site on the net! I have now decided to produce some cards with a wider appeal than just Storm or Pens fans. The obvious extension would be league based rather than team based and so I have great pleasure in presenting the NHL Netminders and ISL Netminders series of cards. Initially these will concentrate on the current netminders in each league but may well be extended in the future to cover any netminders that have played in each league! If you have any comments on any of the cards or would like to make a suggestion for a future series, please contact me here - thanks and enjoy the cards! PD - 13/1/2002 |