The world of hockey card collecting has changed significantly over the years. We’re a long way removed from when kids would stick hockey cards in the spokes of their bikes.
Now, cards are no longer cheap pieces of cardboard, but are printed on high-quality cardstock. You can get cards that are already signed by players or that contain pieces of game-worn jerseys or game-used sticks. There are content creators whose entire channels are devoted to unboxing cards in search of rare chase cards.
In pursuit of making cards more and more collectable, some card designs have grown truly wild. A couple of years ago, I highlighted an Upper Deck “Portraits” card of Quinn Hughes in Elizabethan cosplay with a giant ruff around his neck, surrounded by a faux gilded frame.
That was strange, but a Quinn Hughes card in Upper Deck’s latest Credentials set is even more bizarre.
The 2024-25 Upper Deck Credentials set just came out this week, with some of the rarest cards part of the Fleer Pro Visions insert set. Instead of using photos of the players in action, the Pro Visions cards are illustrated by artist Seth Adams, a callback to the painted Pro Visions cards by Terry Smith in the nineties.
There are nine cards in the Pro Visions set, featuring Brad Marchand, Logan Stankoven, William Nylander, Aleksander Barkov, Patrick Kane, Evgeni Malkin, Evan Bouchard, and Anze Kopitar, along with Hughes. Each card is distributed as 1 in every 300 hobby boxes. With each hobby box containing 12 packs, that’s a 1-in-3600 chance of getting each Pro Visions card in a pack.
As pointed out on the r/Canucks subreddit, Hughes’ card in the Pro Visions insert set is very, very strange.
I have questions.
Why is Quinn Hughes shirtless and more ripped than Chris Hemsworth? Why does he have a long mane of unruly hair like Jason Momoa? Why is he calling down lightning like, well, Chris Hemsworth again?
Rather than Quinn Hughes, this is Quinn Zeus, which is pretty awesome, even if it makes no sense whatsoever.
It gets even more confusing when you look at a couple of the other cards in the Pro Visions series. With the set so new and the cards so rare, not all of the cards have been captured for posterity on the internet, but I found the cards for Nylander, Bouchard, Stankoven, and Barkov listed on eBay.
Nylander is surrounded by maple leaves with the names of the six boroughs that were amalgamated to form Toronto: Etobicoke, York, North York, East York, Scarborough, and Old Toronto. For someone who plays for the Toronto Maple Leafs, it’s a little on the nose, but it makes sense.
Likewise, Bouchard gets an illustration befitting of his team: he’s clearly an oil worker out on the oil patch in Alberta, walking away from a geyser of oil like he’s Derek Zoolander heading into the mines.
Sure, he looks a little bit more like Filip Hronek than Evan Bouchard, but the illustration makes sense for a defenceman on the Edmonton Oilers.
Stankoven and Barkov also get illustrations that connect with their teams. Dallas Stars forward Stankoven is in space, like a literal star. Florida Panthers captain Barkov is in the jungle with the claws and lower haunches of the literal panther that is in their logo.
So, again, why is Quinn Hughes illustrated as Zeus? Did the artist think Quinn Hughes plays for the Tampa Bay Lightning instead of the Vancouver Canucks? Could he not figure out what a “Canuck” even is?
It’s weird. It’s strange. But it’s also kind of awesome.
Hughes isn’t the only illustrated Canuck in the set, incidentally. There’s also a Fleer Pro Visions Legends insert set that is twice as rare, with cards appearing one in every 600 hobby boxes.
That set features six great players from the past, including Dominik Hasek, Curtis Joseph, Al MacInnis, Martin Brodeur, and Ron Hextall.
The sixth card in the set? Trevor Linden.
The card has yet to show up online, an indication, perhaps, of just how rare it is. Is the illustration of Linden any crazier than Hughes as Zeus? We’ll have to wait and see.
