Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for October 13, 2014

Listen Clayton, sticks don’t grow on trees, you know.

I suppose if the neighbor kid is playing at the highest levels (or the neighbor is just stinking rich), but my sticks which are servicable go for about $30. Still, you do have to have two.

At the beginning of the season, most clubs also have an equipment sale/exchange.

Clayton could earn even more money if he also had a bucket of hot water and offered to replace the Zamboni.

I’m glad my son chose football, the spikes are a bit pricey ($60 at minimum) but the last couple times he bought his own because he has a job.

Sounds like a win-win situation.

The gum is to chew while he’s working…

Let’s see, when I was playing hockey in college (early 70s) my skates would run about $300 and goalie equipment ran another $700 plus the cost of sticks (about $30 each). I also learned how to drive a Zamboni and made a little extra money doing that and refereeing. Somewhere in my files I have my old Zamboni license.

Those equipment swap/exchange meets and stores are great .I understand you can get almost everything – gloves, pads, skates, even sticks.

It is many years since one of our stores had a hockey department and skate exchange. We did sell quite a few pairs of skates each year, and took trades on many. The trade ins were reconditioned and resold to families who could not afford a new pair of skates each year..As for laminated sticks, they were purchased from Bauer and CCM and sold in significant quantities; mostly because kids would break their sticks with some degree of regularity. This became worse with the advent of the curved blade; but improved somewhat when fiberglas wrapped sticks became available. Of course today, most sticks are composite or carbon fibre and can be quite expensive…

2011 copyright. Have seen this at twice before. So, now this makes three?