Well Equipped: A Saturday at Hockeytown Authentics

Game used equipment nerds like myself are always up for a good equipment sale, and the Red Wings' 2012 incarnation did not disappoint. Red Wings equipment manager Paul Boyer was on hand to answer questions, and he brought quite the haul with him. Aside from the gold standard of game used equipment (jerseys), there were skates, sticks, helmets, gloves and pant shells available. I made the trek to Troy and documented some of my visit in pictures.

 For those of you who haven't been there, Hockeytown Authentics is a haven of merchandise of the two Ilitch owned teams. Two old Easton hockey sticks form the door handles, as they have for at least the past ten years. "Hi, I'm Budd Lynch. Welcome to Hockeytown" greets you as you cross the threshold. Yes, there may be an olde english D on the front, but this is a Red Wings store first and foremost. Don't believe me? Look up. The rafters of Hockeytown Authentics are painted the same ugly blue as the rafters at Joe Louis Arena. There can't be many stores like this in NHL cities across North America.

One of the first sections I hit this year was the skate table. I didn't see any of the skates from the big three, but there were many pairs from guys like Drew Miller and Dan Cleary.

During most of the year there is one stick rack at the center of the store. Not so during the equipment sale. This year there were four, and these four racks may have been the most popular part of the sale. The red Warrior's on the left are all Henrik Zetterberg's. He had 1 24 Beast printed on the back, a tribute to fallen Red Wings Stefan Liv, Ruslan Salei and Brad McCrimmon. Other sticks in the photo belonged to Kronwall, Bertuzzi, and Filppula. Further down were a number of Conklin and Pearce sticks. Obviously not the most popular players, but goalie sticks are a rarity at the sale.

From here, I looped back to the front of the store to check out the game used jerseys. They had home and road regular season sets 1 and 2, which had the tribute patch to McCrimmon, Salei, and Liv. The playoff set (home and road) was also on hand. Below is the captain's C from Nick Lidstrom's home set 1 sweater.

Tag stitched into the hem of each game worn jersey. This one if from the Lidstrom pictured above.

I moved over to the playoff jerseys after this. None had a ton of wear, which isn't a surprise considering the Wings' early exit. The Zetterberg below looks like I Instagramed it, but in reality I'm just not a good photographer and probably had the flash on or something.

Another from the home playoff set, this time of TPH

Gud förbjude, but if Lidstrom retires this will be the captain's C from the last sweater he ever wore at Joe Louis Arena.

Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned that Paul Boyer was on hand to answer questions? Check back frequently. I've got something cool in the works.

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