Let’s get a little philosophical today. What is it that compels some of us hockey acolytes to keep old sticks after their playing days are done?

Is there a parallel in how one puts a thoroughbred out to pasture to live out their years? Are they like old books read long ago, or vinyl records with grooves worn deep, that we pick up every so often so that we can relish their tactile goodness, and feel the memories come flooding back through their words and sounds. Since sticks don’t have words or sounds, is their feel and appearance that triggers those good brain chemicals?

As I was tidying up the garage yesterday, as fine an August afternoon as one can imagine, my attention was drawn to my pile of old lumber (some real wood, some of the newer age composite variety). I’m guessing there were at least a half dozen. I noticed a couple of Sherwood PMPs (with “Feather Glass”), a Koho Torpedo (one of my favs from the Grand River league and my early old-timer days), an RBK of Sidney Crosby’s marketing heyday, a bright red one with Eric Lindros’s name on it, something quite decrepit with a 100 flex (how the heck did I ever own a 100 flex stick?), and a white Easton M2, which I really, really loved (disclaimer: I also have a twin of this M2 on the dock, under the canoe at the cottage because….well, I digress).

I was on a mission to de-clutter and was erring on the side of pitching sentimental stuff that was long past its best-before date. With cold-hearted reason, I concluded these neglected ones were no longer usable on ice by me, no self-respecting kid would want these relics and I didn’t need them as bookends for my firewood pile anymore. They had to go.

But I couldn’t do it. It somehow felt sociopathic to just leave these at the curb. “What kind of a person does that?” I had to ask out loud in order to talk myself off that ledge, rationalizing the sticks to be more like those from the “Island of Misfit Toys” fame than just junk. I finished up in the garage shortly after, and headed out back with my trusty sidekick Gus (golden retriever friend extraordinaire) and proceeded to play a game of shoot and chase with him, where I send several different size and textures of his favourite toy balls into various corners of the backyard using…you guessed it…an old stick (a Bauer Vapor LTX, very nice).