After a whirlwind offseason for Arizona Coyotes captain Oliver Ekman-Larsson, the defenseman is happy he's staying with the team and willing to forget the fact he was almost traded.

"(General manager Bill Armstrong) got in at a tough time, needed to make some decisions and stuff like that," Ekman-Larsson said, according to Arizona Republic's Jose M. Romero. "But we've had some good conversations so far and I'm looking forward to getting to know him better. It's been good, but at the same time, it's easier to talk face to face than over the phone or Skype or Facetime. I don't think it's going to be a problem putting that behind, not from me at least. That's all I can talk about."

It was reported shortly after the Coyotes hired Armstrong in September that the team asked Ekman-Larsson to waive his no-movement clause.

The 29-year-old submitted only two teams to which he would accept a trade, and, ultimately, nothing came of the discussions.

Ekman-Larsson added that he understands situations can become tricky when it comes to hockey decisions by management.

"I also get that it's a business side of things, and that's how it works," Ekman-Larsson said. "I hope that's one of the reasons why I'm the captain of this club, because I do think about other people and my teammates. That's something I grew up doing and it's who I am as a person."

Ekman-Larsson inked an eight-year, $66-million extension with the Coyotes in 2018.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Never doubt the tortoise's ability to cross the finish line on top.

U.S. authorities allowed Braden Holtby and his two pet reptiles to leave the country and cross into Canada on Friday, following an ordeal that left the Vancouver Canucks goaltender and his animal companions stranded at the border for several days.

On Wednesday, Holtby's wife, Brandi, asked her Twitter followers for help dealing with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because the couple hadn't realized they needed to file export papers for the creatures in addition to import documents.

The next day, she revealed the government agency was on the case.

Finally, on Friday, she provided an update that brought the snafu to a satisfying conclusion.

Holtby, who was born in Saskatchewan, will play for a Canadian team for the first time in his NHL career next season. He signed a two-year, $8.6-million contract with the Canucks in October after spending 10 years with the Washington Capitals.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Ken Reid's brain is filled with hockey card memories.

There's the time when the Sportsnet broadcaster's mother brought home a box of 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee cards from an auction. It cost $10. Inside was a highly coveted and extremely valuable Wayne Gretzky rookie card that Reid and his younger brother immediately wrestled over.

There's also the card and collectible shows that the brothers would frequent as teenagers coming of age in Nova Scotia in the early 1990s. Sometimes they'd even set up their own merchandise table and, after a weekend of action, head home with an extra $500 to spend on new cards.

Then there's the recent flashbulb memory of Reid's 7-year-old son, Jacoby, opening up a 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee Platinum pack and staring at a rare Jack Hughes autographed card. That moment - and Jacoby's interest in the hobby in general - brings everything full circle for the 45-year-old Reid.

"We live in a world where everything changes all the time," the longtime Sportsnet Central anchor said. "I love the fact that you can buy a card and it's still 2.5 by 3.5 inches, the same as it was in 1960. Of course, there are cards that are different - jersey cards and autograph cards, for instance - but I absolutely love that for old-school collectors like me, the main cards are the same."

While there's no silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, one byproduct of 2020 is the sports card boom. Industry insiders claim there hasn't been this much interest in collecting since its peak in the late 1980s and early '90s. Sports fans from Reid's generation are now nostalgic adults with disposable income, impressionable children, and messy closets that hold troves of old cards.

This perfect storm has led to massive growth in all card categories, including hockey. "It's exploded, I think, is how I would put it," said Ryan Cracknell, an editor for Beckett, a media company specializing in sports card coverage.

"When we realized how serious things were with COVID-19, my initial reaction was, 'If it's going to affect the economy, if it's going to affect people's jobs - this is not good.' The first thing people traditionally put on the sidelines are their collectibles, their hobbies," said Chris Carlin, the head of customer experience for Upper Deck. "But, what we found out pretty quickly was that people weren't going on trips, weren't going out to dinner. As they were stuck at home, they were looking for hobbies, ways to pass the time."

Chris Callahan, the director of marketing for auction house PWCC Marketplace, concurs: "This is the best spot the industry has been in many, many years. The interest has been amazing, the price appreciation has been amazing. The types of collectors or investors that have entered into the market are really impressive, from serious money injected to fairly big celebrities that have gotten involved. There's a lot of momentum right now."

The ultimate sign of the times? In August, Vegas hotshot Dave Oancea sold a 2009 autographed rookie card of Los Angeles Angels superstar Mike Trout for a whopping $3.94 million. The transaction surpassed the $3.12 million benchmark that a 1909 Honus Wagner T206 card established in 2016. (Another Wagner card went for $3.25 million in October.)

Hockey's flagship set, Upper Deck's Series 1, hit brick-and-mortar and online stores Wednesday. The 2020-21 edition, headlined by the first NHL card for New York Rangers blue-chip prospect Alexis Lafreniere, was eagerly anticipated. Predictably, cases flew off the shelves across North America.

Customers at Breakaway Sports Cards in Hamilton, Ontario, bought an entire Canada Post van's worth of product ahead of the release, co-owner Chuck Durka said. More than 100 people purchased Upper Deck products online while the store itself was nonstop all day with a substantial lineup outside. "We're having trouble staying on top of the orders," Durka said Thursday. "It's just nuts."

On eBay and other digital marketplaces, the Lafreniere "Young Guns" card is already being flipped for upwards of $350. "There hasn't been anybody that's done those kinds of numbers since (Connor) McDavid," Durka said.

Upper Deck, the sole producer of hockey cards thanks to an exclusive multi-year agreement with the NHL and players' association, dropped another set last week through Tim Hortons. The Tim's collection is especially popular among kids because of the price point (one three-card pack sells for $0.99 CAD with the purchase of a beverage) and the allure of pumping some safe fun into a drive-thru order.

"It sounds weird, but I think a lot of credit should go to Tim Hortons for them putting packs back in stores a few years ago," said Reid, who has authored a pair of "Hockey Card Stories" books. "Suddenly, people would randomly buy a pack with their coffee for a buck. That might have reignited the spark in a lot of older collectors and started a spark in a lot of younger collectors."

Powering the renaissance is this cross section of several large groups of people - young and old, experienced and inexperienced, casual and hardcore. Within those groups are subgroups of people who either buy sports cards in lieu of lottery tickets or treat collecting cards strictly as a passion project.

"The neat thing about the sports card industry is that it can be used as a tool to make money, but it can also be used as a tool for simply having a hobby," Reid said. "For most people, it's a hybrid of both. Everybody, even the hobbyist, likes to make a buck, right?"

A flurry of popular pack-opening livestreams over the past few years - better known as case or group "breaks" - laid the groundwork for the 2020 boom, said Rey Revereza of Dolly's Sports Cards in Toronto. Zion Williamson's much-hyped NBA debut in January got the ball rolling. The nostalgia-soaked Michael Jordan documentary "The Last Dance" moved the needle again, and the industry has been on a steep incline ever since, with dozens of influential voices, including entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, musician and DJ Steve Aoki, and reality TV's Rob Kardashian, encouraging outsiders to enter the market.

Revereza estimates there's a 65-35 split between investors/flippers and hobbyists among his customer base. He's lost count of the number of young people who've noted their passion for collecting cards can be traced back to watching a single TikTok or YouTube video during the pandemic. "Social media has transformed the way this hobby is perceived," Carlin said.

Investing in sports cards versus company stocks is inherently cooler and more interesting, and the barrier to entry, from an intellectual standpoint, is lower. As Callahan points out, "How much easier is it to follow LeBron James' career, Sidney Crosby's career - whoever it is - versus a Citibank stock?"

Callahan's company, PWCC, has been in business since 1998, but it took until 2019 to introduce a new service: access to a Class 3 bank vault located in its Oregon officers. Collectors can secure and insure cards, which typically aren't covered under homeowner insurance, and receive an appraisal. PWCC customers can also take out a loan against their cards.

Insiders tend to subscribe to the notion that the value of a sports card is determined by five factors:

1. Supply and demand (scarcity of the product drives up the price)
2. Card condition (bends and chips drop a grading)
3. Brand power (some sets catch on over the years, others don't)
4. Card style (premium marks, such as a jersey patch, boost appeal)
5. Name recognition (legendary players like Gretzky and Trout occupy their own stratosphere)

The boom 30 years ago nosedived in the mid-'90s amid labor strife in hockey, baseball, and basketball. Card publishers had flooded the market with so much product that the supply-and-demand ratio was completely out of sync. So far, it appears companies have learned their lessons.

"At the end of the day, we have to make what's responsible for the category," Carlin said. "Otherwise, there's a perception that it's not collectible because there's too much of it and there's just not enough interest in it anymore. You can really do a lot of damage to your brand if you make too much."

Cracknell and Callahan are both bullish on the industry, believing that although booms don't last forever, this is not some one-year fad. "If there were 100 people interested in cards in 2019 and this boom ... grows it to 500, and we're left with half of those new people when the boom is over, we're in a better place than we were a couple of years ago," Callahan said.

As for Reid, no matter his age, there's no denying the dopamine rush associated with ripping open a package of untouched cards.

"With hockey cards, it's kind of like the Mark Messier Lay's potato chips ad: You can't eat just one, you can't have just one," he said.

"It's an easy thing to get hooked on."

John Matisz is theScore's national hockey writer.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

With a full year now under his belt as head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Sheldon Keefe believes his team's stars, specifically Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander, will improve as they continue to mature.

"They have a great deal to grow. I don't know where it shakes out in terms of their production. The production has been fairly good, of course, especially in the regular season as they've established themselves as premier players," Keefe said to TSN's Mark Masters. "But I think all of our players have room to grow in all the other areas of their game in terms of the consistency away from the puck and the competitiveness in terms of their ability to bring the best out of others around them and not just be at their best."

All three have logged several years of NHL experience now, but they're still young. Both Matthews and Marner are just 23 years old, while Nylander is 24.

Over the past three seasons, Marner ranks 19th in the league in points, and Matthews ranks third in goals.

While they've contributed offensively, Keefe wants to see the youngsters develop in all aspects. Adding veterans to the club over the offseason will hopefully improve the trio's leadership skills.

"There is a responsibility, as you grow as leaders, to bring the best out of those around you and that's a big part of it," Keefe said. "... We're a significantly older and more experienced team this season than we were last, so we're going to have greater support in that area, because I do think it requires a team of leaders. I think that will just help everybody find a whole new level."

Toronto has brought in several experienced players since free agency started, including Joe Thornton, Wayne Simmonds, and Zach Bogosian. The team also re-signed Jason Spezza.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Ottawa Senators signed forward Egor Sokolov to a three-year, entry-level deal, the team announced Friday.

Sokolov, 20, has spent the previous three seasons with the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. The Russian sniper led the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League with 46 goals and finished third with 99 points in 2019-20 after going undrafted in his first two years of eligibility.

"To Egor's credit, he's worked especially hard for this," Senators general manager Pierre Dorion said. "Despite initially being undrafted, he applied himself to improve many facets of his game to the point where he led the Quebec league in goals last season. We were pleased to be able to select him where we did last month and look forward to seeing his career progress."

Sokolov signed a professional tryout contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets in September 2019, but was released by the club after appearing in one preseason game.

The 6-foot-4 winger also represnted Russia at the 2020 world juniors, contributing three goals and one assist through seven contests.

Sokolov was selected by Ottawa in the second round (61st overall) of the 2020 NHL Draft.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Raeto Raffainer, Joe Thornton's general manager at HC Davos in Switzerland, thinks Jumbo Joe could be the veteran presence the Toronto Maple Leafs need in order to find success this upcoming season.

"When the coaching staff gives him a role, he'll be there," Raffainer told Sportsnet's Luke Fox. "The question is: Do you want to play him through all the games? He needs to find a way to help the organization jump this first playoff round. They will be smart with him. They know exactly what they bought with him. The fire in his eyes and his whole body to win something is going to be huge. And he will help this organization to win, that's for sure."

Thornton, who signed a one-year contract with Toronto this past offseason, has posted six points in six games while playing overseas in the National League. Although he's lost some speed, Raffainer believes Thornton's hockey IQ and off-ice habits will stand out.

"I've known him as a player for almost 20 years, so he's still the best in the league anticipating the game, seeing plays, and seeing people nobody else sees," Raffainer said. "(He's) so strong on the puck. Obviously, he's not the fastest anymore, but he's the smartest player that we have. And he's still so good at passing and on the (power play).

"That's one part of why I'm happy he's with us, but the other part is just his human skills. His energy. His happiness. And the way he's working out, coming in even when we give our group a day off. He's there. He's working out all the time and skating all the time, even when the other guys are home."

Thornton, who put up 31 points in 70 games for the San Jose Sharks last season, sits 14th on the all-time list with 1,509 points. He said in October that he joined the Leafs because they're "ready to win now."

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.