Zdeno Chara let Evgeny Kuznetsov use one of his sticks before a training camp practice in mid-January.
“Just don’t break it,” Chara said. “I don’t have enough.”
A few weeks later, Chara’s new shipment of twigs arrived in the United States, but not at the right address. Ariel Ben-Abraham, of the clothing business Create Supply, was delivered Chara’s sticks by accident.
He lives in New Jersey.
Hey @Capitals why are $5k worth of your hockey sticks at my house…
Also what time is practice?
I think @FedEx messed up… 😂 pic.twitter.com/05QzUabiAs
— Ariel Ben-Abraham (@ArielCreate) February 1, 2021
“We get boxes from China daily so it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary,” Ariel said. “FedEx dropped it off along with two other boxes from China and I started going through em like normal and then I got really confused when I saw BOOM 18 hockey sticks.”
The sticks were addressed to Capitals equipment manager Brock Myles at the team’s practice facility in Arlington, VA.
“We called the contact number on there, but there wasn’t an answer,” Ariel said. “So I decided to take it to Twitter since calling FedEx support is torture.”
Ariel’s tweet immediately began going viral.
Chara, a future Hall of Famer, uses a lesser-known brand of hockey sticks called TRUE. Chara gets a special exemption from the NHL to use a 67-inch (170 cm) shafted stick.
I asked Ariel if he was aware of just how big a deal this was.
“I’m a basketball fan,” he said. “Very clueless to be honest.”
When I asked Ariel if he promised to get them back to Chara, he said yes.
“Definitely,” he said. “This is so funny.”
Yo @zdeno33 I know you haven’t tweeted since 2014 but you coming to pick these up or not…? pic.twitter.com/k4eBXF5x14
— Ariel Ben-Abraham (@ArielCreate) February 1, 2021
