As collectors, we all get a thrill when we pull a special card out of a pack, or pick up a card we have been hunting for at a shop, show or online.
But imagine being a hockey card collector and opening a pack and pulling your very own rookie card.
Jamie Lee Rattray got to experience that thrill.
I recently got the chance to watch the Ottawa Senators-Philadelphia Flyers game with her and her family at Canadian Tire Centre in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata, just blocks away from the house she grew up in. She was being honored by the Senators that night for being part of the Canadian women’s hockey team that won a gold medal in Beijing.
After meeting her, I had to ask about her appearance in the 2022 Team Canada Tim Hortons Upper Deck hockey card set. Her face lit up like the Vegas strip.
“I can’t tell you what a thrill it was, not just for me, but for the entire women’s team to be included in the set,” she said.
Her mother, meanwhile, started rummaging through her purse, looking for the small stack of cards featuring her daughter. Before I knew it, she was signing a card with a black Sharpie and handing it to me. I already had her card, both in my Tim Hortons Upper Deck binder and in my stack of doubles, but getting a card signed in person is always a special memory.
I thanked her and handled the card delicately. I could see by the look on her face that autographing your own hockey card is just as exciting as having a card signed and handed to you.
“It’s really exciting for me,” she said. “I never imagined that one day I would be on a hockey card. And it’s not just being on a card. We are on cards in packs with players like Sidney Crosby. I never thought this could ever be possible.”
The cards went on sale in January and were available exclusively at Tim Hortons quick service restaurants in Canada. The set features NHL stars who have played for Team Canada, including retired stars like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Eric Lindros, and current NHL stars Crosby, Connor McDavid, Carey Price, and dozens of others. There is also a subset of Team Canada’s top women’s stars.
“I think my parents kept going back through the drive thru and buying packs to get as many cards of me as they could,” she said, smiling while looking at her mom who still had a few Jamie Lee Rattray cards in her hand.
A little seven-year-old boy named Julian approached her shyly. Jamie Lee’s mother had her trigger fingers ready and whipped out a card before the boy even opened his mouth. Jamie Lee talked to him about hockey, signed his card, and even showed him her gold medal from the Beijing Olympics. The gold medal weighed almost as much as Julian.
Julian and his dad, Trevor, looked at the card. To Julian, it didn’t matter that Jamie Lee Rattray wasn’t in the NHL. She was a real hockey player who won a gold medal at the Olympics. Getting that autograph was something he will remember forever.
“What do you think of the photo they picked for your card?” Trevor asked her.
“I think it’s great,” she replied with a smile. “It’s a celebration shot. I guess it’s proof that I actually scored a goal.”
That comment was pure self-deprecation. Rattray is a gifted goal scorer. She graduated from Clarkson as the school’s all-time scoring leader, leading the Golden Knights to the 2014 NCAA championship with 29 goals and 37 assists for 66 points in 41 games that year. At the Olympics in Beijing, she scored five goals in seven games for Canada.
Rattray has also been one of the premier stars of the Professional Women’s Hockey Player Association events, and had been a top star in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.
Women’s hockey has seen tremendous growth over the last two decades, particularly in Canada. Games between Canada and the United States routinely sell out in Canada and in American college markets. The top women in the game are now household names in Canada. At the 2021 Fall Sport Card and Memorabilia Expo in Toronto, one of the most popular autograph guests was Hockey Hall of Famer Kim St. Pierre.
In Canada, the women’s hockey gold medal game between Canada and the US was the most watched event of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. A record 2.7 million Canadian viewers tuned in, despite an 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time start time. It was the first time that women’s hockey viewership surpassed men’s hockey at the Olympics.
As she looked at her card, she thought about the one thing she would like to see. It would be a full women’s professional hockey league, similar to what basketball has with the WNBA.
“That’s the dream,” the 29-year-old said. “It’s what all of us want. We want to be able to earn a living playing professional hockey.”
Rattray knows that a fully funded women’s professional hockey league may not happen during her playing career.
“If it does happen someday, I guess I will be a pioneer,” she said, smiling.
And perhaps when that day comes, the league will have a card set for hockey fans and collectors.
