Matt Duchene was on cleanup duty, on his hands and knees sifting through old boxes and bags and duffels full of the flotsam and jetsam accumulated by six generations of his family, all of it buried deep within a closet at the family farm in Cornwall, Ontario. It was mostly random junk destined for a dumpster or a donation bin.
Advertisement
But there was also hidden treasure amid old clothes and hockey gear. Duchene’s uncle is current Ducks assistant coach Newell Brown, a 1982 Canucks draft pick who never made it to the NHL as a player but has been an assistant in the league for six teams, dating back to the 1996-97 season.
“Newell had an old Vancouver Canucks bomber jacket,” Duchene said, miming the moment he pulled it out of a box and held it up. “That’s the team that drafted him. I remember looking at it and being like, ‘This is sick.’”
One of the amusing little ironies of being an NHL player is that for all the money you make, you basically subsist on free stuff. Free meals at the rink and on the road. Free rides everywhere you go. Free sticks and skates from companies eager to have you serve as a moving billboard on national broadcasts.
And so much free gear. So much free gear. Other than the suits you have to wear to and from the arena, nearly your entire wardrobe is team-branded. It’s not just the jersey you wear that carries your team’s logo; it’s everything underneath it, too. There are workout shirts, workout shorts, polo shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, windbreakers, toques, backpacks, even toiletry bags.
It raises a dumb question that demands an answer: What do you do with all of that when you get traded?
After all, Brown can’t wear a Canucks bomber jacket around Anaheim. Duchene can’t wear an Avalanche hoodie on a chilly day in Nashville. Ryan O’Reilly isn’t walking around Toronto in a Blues polo.
“It’s just a lot of stuff that you probably won’t ever wear again,” said Montreal defenseman David Savard, who had amassed 12 years worth of Blue Jackets gear when he suddenly became a member of the Lightning at the 2021 trade deadline. “But you keep a lot of it.
“My time in Columbus was a lot of fun for me, a lot of good memories. So, I do keep a few things, just to have them.”
David Savard in 2021. (Dave Reginek / NHLI via Getty Images)Savard goes through all his stuff annually and gives away most of his run-of-the-mill gear, either to family or friends or donation centers. His brothers and his dad will wear his old Blue Jackets gear while exercising or working around the house.
Advertisement
But most of this stuff is tucked away in boxes or bags in basements back home. For some, it’s just laziness. For others, it’s because that old, sweat-stained gear is worth its weight in gold.
“There’s so much, and I keep it all,” Kings center Phillip Danault said. “It means a lot to me, actually. I still have all my old Blackhawks stuff. It was an honor to play there, to get drafted there. My first team that liked me. I kept everything.”
Danault’s favorite is the Stadium Series gear from when the Blackhawks played the Wild at the University of Minnesota’s football stadium in 2016. It’s a nice logo, outlined in green with pine trees poking out of the top. And it remains one of the most memorable games in Danault’s career. So he kept it. It’s all stuffed in a bag back home.
After two seasons in Chicago and six in Montreal, Danault is now in his second year in Los Angeles. So no, he can’t wear a Habs shirt around Manhattan Beach. But maybe someday he will.
“Maybe after my career, I’ll choose which jersey I want to wear,” he said with a smile.
Mikko Koivu and Phillip Danault in 2016. (Hannah Foslien / Getty Images)Duchene has a few duffel bags — an Avalanche one, a Senators one, a Blue Jackets one and a Predators one — stuffed with gear from each corresponding team. He’s got three kids — a 4-year-old boy, a 2-year-old girl and a newborn girl — and someday, he wants them to have a moment like he had deep in Uncle Newell’s closet.
“It’s all labeled so my kids can go through it one day,” Duchene said. “Especially for my boy.”
Duchene called himself a “big souvenir guy.” He’s got a whole room devoted to things he’s picked up throughout his 14-year career. He has a rack that displays sticks from his own milestone moments or big games. He also collects other players’ sticks. When Peter Forsberg tried to come back to the NHL in the 2010-11 season, he lasted just two games. But Duchene, in just his second year, was determined to shoot his shot. That’s how he ended up with the last stick the great Forsberg ever used in the NHL.
Advertisement
“After he called it quits, I said, ‘Hey Pete, can I have your stick, the last stick you used? Can you sign it for me?’” Duchene recalled. “He didn’t care. He’s like, ‘Yeah, just take it.’”
See, sentimentality isn’t universal. That’s how one man’s treasure is another man’s trash, finding its way into a white kitchen trash bag stuffed into a donation box outside a grocery store.
That sentiment — or lack thereof — also can be tied to the team in question. Blackhawks center Jason Dickinson was picked in the first round by the Stars in 2013 and has great memories of his eight years in the Dallas organization. He’s particularly fond of the neon blackout jerseys and the 2020 Winter Classic gear at the Cotton Bowl (that logo is shaped like a belt buckle … because, Texas).
Dickinson is a lot less attached to the “gitch” — it’s hockey slang for underwear, but Dickinson used it for just about any item of clothing with a team logo on it — he got in his one miserable year in Vancouver.
“Things didn’t go the way I planned there, so maybe the connections weren’t as strong,” he said. “The gitch from Dallas, the stuff that I got there, still means something.”
Half your wardrobe becoming instantly unwearable is a very small and insignificant part of the process of getting traded, of course. But it underscores the unique and bizarre nature of life as a professional athlete. In what other profession could you show up to work one morning and be transferred to a completely different company in a completely different city against your wishes, and then start working for that new company later that evening? Happens all the time in sports.
The morning of the 2015 trade deadline, Blackhawks depth forward Ben Smith was traded to San Jose. As he left the Blackhawks dressing room for the last time, a dazed look on his face, he had a Blackhawks-branded bag slung over his shoulder. There probably was a Blackhawks-branded toiletry kit inside, he says, and maybe some Blackhawks-branded Under Armour. Later that night, he was halfway across the continent playing in a game for the Sharks. That doesn’t happen in other jobs.
Advertisement
Hockey players’ entire identities are wrapped up in their team. The clothes just illustrate that fact. Their team is their friends, their coworkers, their family, their entire lives. And for however long you’re wearing that logo, you all but live and die by the success of that team.
Then in an instant, that connection is completely severed. That team’s success means nothing. That windbreaker is unwearable. Suddenly, a team you never thought twice about is your life. Another team’s logo is your identity. Another group of people is your family.
“It’s weird, right?” Dickinson said.
Jason Dickinson and Patrick Kane in 2021. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)“You just pack up and leave,” said Avalanche forward Andrew Cogliano, who’s been traded three times, including at last year’s deadline. “That’s the biggest thing: You don’t even talk to people. You might reach out later down the line, but other than that, there’s not much said, not much to do. You just get your gear and leave. That’s the weirdest thing. Because you’ve created relationships with people and players on the team, and you have a bond with a lot of people. But then it happens, and you just get your stuff and go. It’s over. Just like that.”
Duchene grew up an Avalanche fan, so when he was dealt to Ottawa at the 2018 deadline, after nine seasons in Colorado and a lifetime of fandom, it was numbing.
“There’s definitely an identity attached to who you’re playing for, and for me playing in Colorado for as long as I did, and growing up such an Avs fan, it was such a big identity thing,” Duchene said. “Even though I was ready to move on from there and have a different opportunity, I still identified with the team. When it happened, it was very bittersweet. I didn’t expect to feel that way. I felt like part of me was just gone.”
All that remains are the memories — so many of which are sewn into all those shirts, all those shorts, all that gear, all that “gitch.” Maybe you donate some of it, sure. Re-gift it to friends and family. But not all of it. Never all of it.
Advertisement
Everyone’s got a box, a duffel bag in a basement or a closet somewhere. One you just can’t bring yourself to throw out.
“It’s all back home in Sweden,” said Capitals defenseman Erik Gustafsson, playing for his fifth team in less than three years. “When we move back, I’ll probably frame a bunch of it and have it in the basement or something like that. It’s a cool thing to be able to look back on. It’s your own history.
“And for me, it’s gonna be a lot of f—ing jerseys, right?”
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Scott Rovak and Derek Cain / Getty Images)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2tqcWtjZXxzfJFsZmlqX2eAcLrHpWStqpGZsm6zyK2aoWc%3D