After being cancelled for the 2021-22 season, Trilogy came back for 2022-23 — albeit, near the end of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

Trilogy is perhaps best known for its “Signature Pucks” cards that feature a small rubber puck with an autograph on it, embedded right into the card. Trilogy — or should I say Trilo3y, with a “3” as the “g” since that is how it is spelled — also tends to use the number 3 as a recurring theme. 

A box of Trilogy Hockey cards costs around $130 for a six-pack box. Each pack contains four cards, and the box promises one autographed card and one memorabilia card. 

I recently opened a box of 2022-23 Trilogy. Here is what I found inside. 

13 Base Cards

I got 13 base cards in my box and none were doubles of each other. Base cards have gold foil on three — three! — of the four edges and use head-to-toe action shots of the players. The base set has 100 cards. 

Card backs have six years of stats — that’s three multiplied by two! — and career totals, as well as info like height, weight, and birthdate. 

3 Trilogy Rookie Premieres

You get THREE rookie cards in a box of Trilogy Hockey.

There are 50 different rookies in the Trilogy Rookies Premieres subset, but there are three versions of each player: Common, Uncommon, and Rare. 

Common Trilogy Rookies (cards 101-150) are numbered out of 999 and use a full photo of the player, from helmet to skates. 

Uncommon Trilogy Rookies (cards 151-200) are numbered out of 699 and use a mid-range photo of the player.

Rare Trilogy Rookies (cards 201-250) are numbered out of 299 and use a closeup photo of the player.

Within each tier there are also three “levels”: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. All the best rookie cards are in Level 3, including Shane Wright, Juraj Slafkovsky, Matt Boldy, Matty Beniers, and Owen Power. 

Also, there are red, blue, and green parallels of each Rookies Premieres card. 

I hope you are taking notes because there WILL be a test at the end 🙂 

The three Rookie Premieres cards I got were Viktor Lodin (Common), Noah Cates (Uncommon), and Bobby Brink (Rare). 

Inserts & Parallels

My box of 2022-23 Trilogy Hockey had seven total inserts and parallels. 

1 Base Red Parallel

First up is a Base Red Parallel of Jonathan Marchessault — or should I say Stanley Cup MVP Jonathan Marchessault? This card is serial-numbered 170/499. By the way, there are three — THREE! — different parallel versions: Red, Blue, and Green. There are also three(!) different levels of rarity within each parallel; cards 1-34 are Common, cards 35-67 are Uncommon, and cards 68-100 are Rare. 

1 Frozen in Time Insert

Known as a “Plexi” card because it is printed on thick, clear plastic like plexiglass, this Frozen in Time card of J.T. Miller is numbered 069/275 and is actually pretty cool (no pun intended). The card is about 1/8″ of an inch thick. There are 35 of these Frozen in Time inserts, which focus on both active players and retired legends. 

2 Generations Inserts

Generation inserts are broken into three(!!!) subsets — Past, Present, and Future. Past cards are of Hall of Fame legends, Present cards are of current stars, and Future cards are of young and rising stars. The two Generations inserts I got are Jeremy Swayman (Future) and John Gibson (Present). 

1 Generations Parallel Insert

Why yes, there are parallel versions of insert cards. Strangely, though, there are four parallel versions — and not three(?) — of Generations: Red, Blue, Green, and Pink. I pulled a John Gibson Generations Red Parallel, which is numbered 411/799. 

1 Rookie Renditions Insert 

The word “Rendition” has two definitions:

1. a performance or interpretation, especially of a dramatic role or piece of music.

2. the practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners.

Hmmm…I’m pretty sure Upper Deck didn’t mean the second definition of rendition. So, I’m guessing they were thinking of the first, which means an interpretation or rendering. And “Rookie Renditions” would make a great name for a set of portrait-style illustrations, but not so much for these cards, which dedicate one-third of its design to a swoopy gray border. 

1 Rookie Renditions Parallel Insert 

This “Red Rookie Renditions” scores a hat trick for alliteration! This Pyotr Kotchetkov card is serial-numbered 282/799.

And did you know that Kotchetkov scored an empty net goal for the Chicago Wolves earlier this year?

The “Hits”

A box of 2022-23 Trilogy is supposed to contain one memorabilia card and one autographed card — and I did get one of each, though I was a bit underwhelmed. 

1 Memorabilia Card

There are some really nice memorabilia cards in Trilogy this year, but I got this instead. Honest to goodness, it took me a minute to notice that this was a memorabilia card, as the white jersey swatch blended in a little too well with the white boards. (It almost looks like one of those screens that the NHL uses for the “light-up” board advertisements.) 

Look, I know that NHL players wear white jerseys half the time, and not every jersey swatch can be a colored swatch, or even white with a bit of a  stripe. But at least surround the swatch with some color or something so it doesn’t blend in with the ice, the boards, or Anze Kopitar’s socks! 

This is actually an Orange Foil Jersey card, which fall about 1 in every 28 packs…so yay? 

1 Redemption Card

This redemption card is for a Trilogy Rookie Signature Pucks card of Brayden Tracey, who played one NHL game in 2021-22, where he scored zero points and was a -1. Tracey spent the past two years in the minors, where he has scored about one point in every other AHL game. Needless to say, I’m not really enthused that THIS was my autograph — especially since Tracey’s only NHL game was over 17 months ago. But who knows — maybe next year will be a good year for Tracey. He’s a first-round pick and he’s on the final year of his Entry Level Contract, so maybe the Ducks will give him his shot in the show. 

2022-23 Trilogy gets an average rating for being an average set. It delivers what it promises — that is, one memorabilia card and one autograph card — but nothing else about it is out-of-the-ordinary. The base set isn’t anything special, while most of these inserts could have been from ANY Upper Deck set.  (Upper Deck should really double down on the “three” theme for Trilogy and make inserts of players who scored hat tricks or three players who skate on the same line.) The Frozen in Time inserts — if you get one — are great, and you do get three rookie cards per box. The base set isn’t exciting enough to want to build, and the asking price of $130 for one memorabilia card and one autograph is steep. 

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