A Hockey Life In The Cards 

Kraken goalie coach Steve Briere doesn’t hesitate about which resonates most among the thousands of hockey cards he’s collected of netminders from the past half-century.

He'll quickly point out a dozen or so cards depicting Wayne Thomas, who played 243 games with Montreal, Toronto, and the New York Rangers throughout the 1970s. Though Thomas didn’t play in the 1973 postseason or get his name on that year’s Stanley Cup after Montreal’s victory behind starter Ken Dryden, he remains a champion in Briere’s eyes for a huge reason: He gave him his first paid NHL job.

“I was a glorified video coach, really, because we had nine goalies in the system and we were on the West Coast but our AHL team was in Massachusetts,” Briere, 47, who’d been running a goaltending school after his minor pro playing days, said of how then-San Jose Sharks assistant general manager Thomas hired him to cut footage for the team’s goalie coach Corey Schwab. “So, Schwab couldn’t get out to see all nine goalies play. I’d get all the videos from all the boys and edit the saves into a file.

“And then I’d send it to Wayne and Corey online so they could watch all the boys in five minutes.”

Thomas had already been among the first goaltending coaches in NHL history and helped revolutionize a role Briere eventually landed with the Toronto Maple Leafs after two seasons cutting video for the Sharks. He’s kept in touch with his former boss throughout the years, getting beers with him whenever Thomas visited a daughter in Minnesota – where Briere now makes his home.

“Last year at Christmas I called him up and was like ‘Hey, do you think I can get one of your hockey cards?’,” Briere said. “And he signed and gave me all his cards. I think there were 10 or 15 of them. Basically, every year he played. He gave me multiple cards from every year and stuff so, yeah, that was pretty cool.”

Briere’s passion for card collecting is all about remembering the people behind the cardboard. His first goalie hero was Hall of Famer Patrick Roy from his unlikely 1986 Cup win and Conn Smythe Trophy with Montreal as an AHL call-up, so Briere has plenty of his cards even though he’s yet to meet the current New York Islanders head coach.

“When he won his Cup, I was nine years old,” Briere said. “I watched every game on the black and white TV set in my parents’ home and so from then on, I had all his cards. His rookie card all the way up. I had binders of them. And then after that, it was guys like Mike Vernon and Andy Moog that I could relate more to. The smaller guys.”

The Winnipeg-born Briere had moved with his family to Edmonton in the 1980s and spent several formative years there watching the Oilers’ dynasty that 5-foot-6 Andy Moog was part of. And 5-foot-9 Mike Vernon was just a few hours south playing for the Calgary Flames -- both serving as  inspiration for a 5-foot-8 Briere as he embarked on his own youth hockey netminding career.

Briere eventually played second-tier junior hockey in British Columbia and Manitoba, then in the United States Hockey League for the Omaha Lancers and a Sioux City Musketeers squad then coached by his future Kraken bench boss Dave Hakstol. He played in the NCAA for the University of Alabama-Huntsville before embarking on a minor-pro career in the AHL, East Coast Hockey League, and International Hockey League.

Along the way, he added some of his own cards from playing in North America and overseas to a collection he’d built since his mid-1980s youth in Edmonton.

“I started buying them in packs, like with a stick of gum for 25 cents,” he said. “And soon I had garbage bags full of them. I used to build castles and forts in the living room with all the hockey cards. You didn’t think about the value back then. We’d be running jumping on the cards. Knocking down the castle.”

By the time his family moved back to Winnipeg when he was 12, the late 1980s, and early 1990s “Junk Wax” era of cards had exploded with multiple manufacturers in all sports.

“You’d just be buying boxes of cards,” Briere said. “I get the whole Pro-Set, then Upper Deck had just come out. And O-Pee-Chee, then Parkhurst and Topps. So, you’re just collecting everything. And then it became that I just wanted goalies. So, I started collecting binders and binders of those. And as I became a better goalie and started playing in juniors, I even collected OHL cards and college hockey cards.

“And then it became the just goalies I was playing with or against. Or, guys I played with or against who were playing in the NHL. Guys like Jamie McLennan, Danny Lorenz, and Mike Torchia. I just started collecting the cards of guys that I knew so there was some meaning behind it.”

Briere regrets selling his Roy rookie card for $195 for “gas money in college” but has managed to hold on to the first-year cards of Martin Brodeur, Dominic Hasek, Clint Malarchuk, and Bill Ranford. He’s got goalie cards from the early 1970s of Gilles Meloche, Gerry Desjardins, Phil Myre, and Roy Edwards and some later vintage of Hall of Famer Tony Esposito while his oldest are position players from the early 1960s — Hall of Famer Dickie Moore and Doug Mohns.

Ultimately, Briere’s goal in collecting wasn’t to make money, only memories. His self-proclaimed “coolest” card is a 1992-93 Roy “mini card” from Kraft Singles pre-autographed from the goalie’s Colorado Avalanche days. And he derives value in other ways off the countless binders of cards now filling large Tupperware storage tubs back home in Minnesota.

For one thing, he loves that the cards depict the changes in modern goalie equipment. He’ll spend hours sifting through his stash to see how things have evolved into what Kraken goalies Joey Daccord and Phillip Grubauer wear today.

“It’s mostly things like that – seeing the equipment they wore back then,” he said. “I’ll be like ‘Oh, I remember that glove’ and ‘I had that glove’ or ‘I had that stick and I remember how bad that stick was.’

“You remember going to a glove with a ‘cheater’ from one with no cheater,” Briere said of modern catching gloves with a connected cuff and mid-section that provide an additional puck-blocking area.  “I played with Ken Wregget and he played 20 years after the cheater was invented and you look at his cards and he still had a glove with no cheater.”

His cards also depict how “blockers went from just the glove and a pad to the finger paddings on the inside.” Briere will also look at his cards to study the evolution of goalie masks and how past netminders rarely wore cages.

“When I was a kid, if you wore a (Chris) Osgood mask, it meant you’d made it to juniors and oh wow, then you were cool,” he said, referencing the former Detroit Red Wings goalie from their champion 1990s years who wore distinctive headgear known as “The Helmet” – a regular hockey helmet and cat’s eye cage combination.

But largely, Briere derives his biggest satisfaction from the goalies behind the equipment. Especially when he gets to meet them. His favorite hockey memory came when he was coaching in Toronto and former Maple Leafs Hall of Fame goalie Johnny Bower phoned him up at home and asked whether they could watch a game together. So, they spent three hours in Briere’s box at a Leafs home game analyzing the netminders.

Briere doesn’t have any Bower cards from the 1960s — those pondering possible Christmas gifts for him, there you go — but he does have some from Jacques Caron, a former St. Louis Blues goaltender in the 1970s and later an NHL assistant coach. They worked together at a goaltending school run by Briere.

He also met a boyhood favorite, Brian Hayward, when the former NHL goalie was an Anaheim Ducks broadcaster. “I told him ‘Hey, I remember when you used to play for Winnipeg. I used to watch you as a kid and I’ve got your hockey card.’

“So, there are all these connections. Who would have thought I’d be coaching with Dave Lowry? I’ve got a whole bunch of Lowry cards. What a legend he was in Winnipeg when I was a kid.”

Lowry is one of a handful of non-goalies whose cards he sets aside. Briere tries to not “fan it up” too much with ex-NHL players when it comes to cards, shunning autograph seeking or rambling on too much about them.

“I’ve been a pro for 10 years now, so I’ve got to start acting like one,” he quipped.

But he’ll still warmly pull out the signed Thomas cards when seeking a reminder of where that pro career began. Happily knowing that a common connection to a sport he loves isn’t going anywhere.

“Hockey has been my life,” he said. “And so all of these cards, in their own way, are a story of my life and the people who’ve helped shape that journey.”