As a goalie, I’ve always loved the Number 1. The “goalie number” as everyone often mentioned. I didn’t know why, but I’ve always enjoyed the familiarity of that number. It only made sense that when given the chance to choose my number as a goalie, I’ve always chose the number 1. Some goalies want to distance themselves from the simplicity of the number, and that’s cool. but I’ve relished it.
Preparing for this article, I did some digging as to why #1 has always been dubbed the “goalie number”. Here is the quickly summary I found on this fun topic on HockeyGoalies .org:
“WHY DO MOST GOALTENDERS WEAR #1 AND #30?”
“The legendary Frank Patrick introduced a numbering system in 1911-12 in the PCHA, where players were numbered from the goal out: Goal #1, Point #2, Coverpoint #3, Rover #4, Left Wing #5, Center #6, and Right Wing #7 (this was, of course, in the days of seven-man hockey). Many believe that this evolved from soccer’s traditional numbering system.
There is some evidence of positions being referred to by number – similar to baseball’s scoring system – prior to this, but nothing is documented well. Related to this, when the Yankees started using uniform numbers, they were numbered by their order in the batting lineup (Ruth #3, Gehrig #4, et cetera).
Since, in the old days, it was customary for all players to play the entire game, this system made sense, and it was not until substitutions became prevalent that the idea of additional numbers became necessary.
Occassionally back in the day, players other than the goaltender would wear #1 – when George Hainsworth set the NHL record for single-season shutouts, he wore #10, and his defenseman Herb Gardiner wore #1. At this time, some goaltenders took the highest number on the team because they were the last line of defense. Hainsworth also wore #12 for at least one season, while Davey Kerr wore #15 and Jack Norris wore #17.
When it was not required for teams to dress more than one netminders, it was customary for multiple goaltenders to wear the same #1 over the course of a season – and, in fact, more than one time a goaltender was replaced due to injury, and the new goalie wore the same number.”
Pretty cool history lesson, right? I learn something new about this sport every time I dig a little deeper.
Turning to cardboard: Ever since Panini was on the hockey scene in 2010/2011, I had always been a huge fan of those Prime Patches and the amazing memorabilia cards it would create within that product over the years.
My favourite cards were some of the game-used number cards. While there weren’t many, the complete game-used number sets always stood out to me.
They were rarer than the other number used in the product since only a select few teams had small enough numerical fonts on the front of the jersey to make this happen.
The majority of these type of memorabilia cards would use sleeve numbers, which do make for some impressive patches, sleeve numbers need to be cut up and used on multiple cards to fit the entire number.
In recent years, Upper Deck has also adopted mega patch cards and have produced some very nice game-used cards as well.
After speaking with Brian Price of President’s Choice Trading Cards at the Spring Expo in Toronto about this card idea, I decided it was time to try and bring this idea to life within my card collection. To breakout a soccer analogy from earlier: I was finally stepping onto the field.
Once I provided Brian with the idea for a number card, he got to work on it right away. I specified that unlike some other number cards he’s made that needs to be split into multiple cards, I wanted the lone number 1 memorabilia piece on a single 1/1 card. Due to the smaller chest number fonts on the front of the Buffalo Sabres jersey’s that year, that proved to be a possibility.
Here is an image Brian sent me during the card-making process:
Finally, here is a scan of the finished product after I received the card in-hand recently:
Aside from being one of the most epic numbered cards ever, Dr. Price also offered the personalize the card even further by adding my name to the back of the card. Can’t say I’d ever image that happening, so that was a pretty cool add-on. Safe to say this card was made for my collection in mind… and now it’s officially official!
For my fellow card / memorabilia nerds out there, I always try and find the memorabilia history of my cards whenever I can. It’s not always possible of course, but to see memorabilia “in action” before being used for cards always adds some nice provenance and a certain storytelling element to these cards.
This #1 memorabilia piece came from a game-worn Set 2 Buffalo Sabres Home jersey that was worn by Jhonas Enroth during the 2013-14 regular season. It was worn from December 2nd 2013, to February 6th, 2014. The jersey was used during the following games:
- January 9th, 2014 vs Florida Panthers
- January 23rd, 2014 vs Carolina Hurricanes
- January 28th, 2014 vs Washington Capitals
- February 3rd, 2014 vs Edmonton Oilers
- * This jersey was also used in multiple warm-ups and backup appearances*
I have included 2 pictures of the jersey from an older NHL .com auction. It was then later sold through Classics Auctions, so I included additional pictures from that listing, too.
This jersey was most recently sold through a private collector directly to President’s Choice Trading Cards earlier this year back in January, 2025.
Like I mentioned earlier, this jersey was recently sold through a private collector to Brian Price / President’s Choice Trading Cards. The private seller actually reached out to me originally to try and sell me the jersey at the beginning of this year. While I am always appreciative of collectors contacting me about new items for this collection, I already own a Buffalo Sabres home jersey, so I instead passed along Brian’s contact information, hoping a deal would get done.
Luckily, it did. Funny enough, Brian reached out to me after being contacted about this jersey to ask me for more background on the Jhonas Enroth jersey to help prove its authenticity.
And last but certainly not least, here are some photos of Enroth wearing the Sabres jersey that created this unique game-used memorabilia card.
January 9th, 2014 vs Florida Panthers
Well, that does it this time around. It will hard hard to top this 1/1 card this year I’d think, but we will see how the rest of the year goes. Maybe I will finally reach the 80 1/1 card milestone soon. Either way – I am going to keep looking!
Thanks for taking the time to read this article as always.
Happy Collecting,
Aaron
CREASECOLLECTOR 
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