Pittsburg Post-Gazette — Matt Cullen is 40 years old, and has appeared in 1,337 regular-season games in the National Hockey League.
If that’s not enough to make the point that he’s been around the game for a long time, consider this: Cullen remembers playing hockey with a wooden stick.
That’s noteworthy, because while many of Cullen’s teammates might not realize it, there was a time when the composite sticks that dominate today’s game would have qualified as science fiction.
“Some of these guys probably never used a wooden stick,” said defenseman Trevor Daley, who said he hasn’t played with one since the 1990s, before he broke into the Ontario Hockey League.
Cullen used wooden sticks [“A Mario Lemieux wood stick. Koho.”] when he was in high school in Minnesota, then switched to a metal shaft with replaceable wooden blades while at St. Cloud State from 1995-1997.
