Autograph Alley: The RoughRiders Quest

Matt Tennyson recently became the 12th former Cedar Rapids RoughRiders player to play in the National Hockey League. The defenseman is with the San Jose Sharks.

Over the years, I've made it one of my missions to get autographed 8x10 photos of every one of those guys. Not necessarily for myself, though I do have a few, but for Riders Coach/General Manager Mark Carlson.

The idea came from seeing an entire wall and a half in the RoughRiders locker room that is covered with 8x10s of former C.R. players in their college uniforms. Colleges send those photos to the Riders.

Can't imagine a better feeling than knowing you played a role in helping a guy get to the highest level of his profession, so I thought it would be a nice gesture to get Coach as many autographed photos of his NHL graduates as I could. My idea was for each of those players to personalize their autographs to him.

My first try came a few years ago with David Moss, the first former Rider to make it to "The Show." He was with the Calgary Flames at the time, and I sent him a photo and a letter explaining my mission and asking if he would sign the photo for Coach. Even finagled some Canadian postage for the return envelope.

A little bit to my surprise, he did send it back, inscribing the photo with something like "To Coach Carlson, Thank You For Getting Me Here." Awesome.

Since then, I've acquired autographed 8x10s for Coach of Casey Wellman, Teddy Purcell, Alex Stalock, Richard Bachman, Alec Martinez, Derek Peltier, Matt Donovan and Justin Abdelkader. They're all in frames and in Coach's office at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena.

My favorite inscription came from Purcell, who wrote "Carly, Here's To Fist Pumps and Championships," in reference to the 2004-05 Clark Cup championship team in Cedar Rapids and Carlson's penchant (at least in the old days) of giving a fist pump for big victories. Most of the photos came via mail, but I did get in-person autographs from Bachman, Wellman and Abdelkader when they were playing for minor-league American Hockey League teams.

They all remembered me from covering the team when they were here, which I thought was really cool.

So by process of elimination here, I've got three guys left to get for Coach: Miele, Wingels and now Tennyson. Haven't tried very hard for any of the three, yet, so guess I'd better get on that.

Or if anyone out there knows them and can help me out, that'd be great!