Teams around NHL give out unique prize for great play in victories
Welcome to Star Wears, where our Short Shifts squad will highlight each participating NHL team’s unique and creative way to honor their player of the game after each victory, handing them a token of appreciation that usually lasts at least one season, and sometimes takes on a life of its own.
Team: Minnesota Wild
Item: Redwood Tree Hat
Origin Story: Wild general manager Bill Guerin explained how a Redwood tree shares its roots to grow and equated that to teamwork and that set off some alarm bells for players.
City/Team connection (dubious or otherwise): Do the Wild want to be like the mighty Redwood? Maybe! Let’s let forward Marcus Foligno explain: “Billy Guerin kind of brought up the little note about the redwood tree, and how it can be up to 100 or so feet tall. And it’s roots aren’t that big, but it grabs on to other people’s roots, or trees around its roots, and kind of the message behind it all was to be a good teammate, rely on each other and you can be however tall you want to be. So we got a redwood hat.”
introducing: THE hat pic.twitter.com/1czavd02Av
Fun Fact: The tallest tree in the world is currently a Redwood named Hyperion. It resides in California and it is over 380 feet high. For comparison, Big Ben in London stands at 315 feet while the Statue of Liberty in New York City is 305 feet tall.
Quotable: “It’s got a little bit of Indiana Jones look to it,” Foligno said. “It’s actually pretty nice.”
As far as the feathers, look, that was all defenseman Zach Bogosian.
“I think that was thrown in by Bogo,” Foligno said. “I think he just threw in some feathers and made it look a little nicer than it was. Put a touch of his style in it.”
– NHL.com Independent Correspondent Jessi Pierce contributed to this report.
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