No more wood sticks in the NHL.

This story depresses me and basically takes that away that nostalgic feeling I once held for wood sticks. As I watch game after game and watch these carbon fiber sticks shatter, I know that we are stuck with them and they are the future. This article also is an accurate illustration of what happens when you farm out your labor to an over seas location.

Actually, not so much. There is no longer a single NHL player wielding the true meaning of the word twig. Like zero. Zilch. Zip.

Even more upsetting is there probably will never be again.

“It’s the end of an era,” said Phoenix Coyotes defenceman Adrian Aucoin, one of the last holdouts, who switched last season. “In my case, Reebok changed factories with their shaft and the wood stick they produce now is a completely different stick. It was just not close to what I used to. I wasn’t so thrilled about it, but times change and you have to move on.”

The same thing happened to Ottawa Senators centre Jason Spezza when his brand of choice, Sherwood-Drolet, decided to farm out the mass production of wooden sticks to such far-flung places as Estonia and China in order to concentrate on the production of composite models.

Same goes for 24-year-old Paul Stastny, the last of the Luddites. The Colorado Avalanche centre switched from a Sherwood wooden to a Sherwood one-piece at the start of this season.

“Last season I went through a lot of wood sticks – I think what happened was they were being made at different factories so they were never quite the same although they said they were,” said Stastny. “It was still the same company, but in my mind they were completely different sticks than the ones I was using before. The average person may not notice, but when you’ve used the same stick since bantam and you get something a little different you can tell right away. So that also played a factor in me switching over. That, and technology is always getting better so it’s a case of evolving with the times.”

Aucoin’s first game with a composite stick was on Dec. 19, 2009 against the Anaheim Ducks.

“I’d been using the new Reebok wooden ones and the shot wasn’t right and something wasn’t working so I grabbed a Shane Doan pattern, a Robert Lang pattern, a Peter Mueller pattern and one Warrior had made for me when I was in Chicago,” said Aucoin, a former Vancouver Canuck. “I used all four sticks in a game and I scored with the Shane Doan pattern and it just felt better so basically my stick is a Shane Doan pattern with my name on it.”[read the rest of the story]