This beauty is an autograph parallel from a 10-card insert set in 2010-11 Donruss that celebrated enforcers from the 1980's. The base inserts fell about one per box. I love the way the blue ink really pops against the faded, newsprint-like colors of the card itself. The autograph parallels are numbered to 250.
Hextall is the perfect goalie for this set. He was known a guy who played on -- and sometimes over -- the line. He violently slashed Kent Nilsson behind the knees during game four of the 1987 Stanley Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers, swinging his stick baseball-style in what he said was retaliation for a slash he'd taken earlier from Glenn Anderson. A few months later, Hextall broke a teammate's arm during a practice session ahead of the 1987 Canada Cup; he later said the the teammate, Sylvain Turgeon, was too close to his goal.
Instead of those slashes, Donruss highlight's Hextall's attack on Chris Chelios during the 1989 Wales Conference Finals against the Montreal Canadiens. Hextall came flying out of his crease and absolutely leveled Chelios with a haymaker, apparently in retribution for a hit Chelios had laid earlier on Brian Propp. Donruss doesn't mention it, but Hextall was suspended for the first 12 games of the 1989-90 season because of the incident. (Video of it can be found here.)
I happened across this card, which is my second Hextall auto, while browing eBay a couple of months ago. The seller was asking for a little less than $30, but agreed to sell for around $17. I suspect I overpaid, but I couldn't resist the newspaper-Hextall combination. On the plus side, Hextall is by far the biggest name in the Tough Times lineup (which also includes such luminaries as Basil McCrae and Lyndon Byers). So I'm thinking the rest of the auto parallels could make for a fun, but still reasonable, chase.
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