When I was 14 or 15, I had been playing hockey for 7 or so years and I had switched from wooden sticks to an aluminum shaft because I kept breaking sticks. Unfortunately I'd also discovered the ability to reshape stick blades to get the shot I wanted, and I was breaking blades left and right. Because the shaping process warped the wood.
One time my dad asked me to shape a blade for him so he could take it to my coach and see what was happening. After a few weeks I forgot about this and a month or so had passed when my dad came to me with this box from Sherwood (hockey stick company). In it was 100 custom made stick blades, with Goodwin printed on them and everything. This was just before I'd left for Canada to play full time. Before the knee injury that would mark my slow decline from the sport.
I still get out there from time to time and I've used these blades almost exclusively since that day he gave me the box of them. I'm down to the last two or three and I don't want to use them anymore, I want to save them. It's things like this that hit me the hardest and make me miss my dad the most.
