I'm an advertising photographer based in Edmonton, and for the past 15 seasons I've also had the privilege of photographing NHL games. While photography has been my career, hockey cards have become my passion project.

I started collecting goalie rookie cards shortly after the pandemic—probably the worst possible time from a pricing standpoint. My goal seemed simple enough: collect a rookie card of every goalie who has ever played an NHL game. How hard could that be?

At first, I bought inexpensive cards. Before long, the collection grew into bigger purchases, rarer cards, and eventually something far beyond a collection—it became a research project.

As the years passed, I discovered that many NHL goaltenders never received a traditional rookie card. That realization sent me down the rabbit hole of team-issued postcards, signed index cards, AHL and minor league releases, junior and college issues, and virtually any collectible that represented a goalie's earliest appearance. Every time I thought the archive was complete, another obscure goalie surfaced, and the search began again.

Along the way, I've made just about every mistake a collector can make. I've bought overgraded cards, overpaid simply because a card almost never appears for sale, made money on some purchases, and lost plenty on others. I've even spent more than $125 on a card that might only be worth fifty cents, because sometimes the only way to convince someone to dig through a forgotten box is to make it worth their time.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that rarity doesn't always equal value. Many goalie rookie cards are surprisingly inexpensive, while others command astonishing prices. Collecting isn't always logical—and that's exactly what makes it so enjoyable.

My goalie rookie card collection is constantly evolving. I'm always upgrading cards, and occasionally even downgrading too. The archive continues to grow every season as new goaltenders make their NHL debut.

I am very certain I have all the cards now, however if you know of a goalie who played in the NHL and isn't represented in the archive, or if you have information about goalie rookie card that I may have missed, I'd love to hear from you.

After all, the search is never truly over—and you can be part of it.