Over the weekend, sometime between watching the Cavs lose and heckling Yankees fans with replica jerseys that their team doesn't wear names on the backs of theirs, I was watching Sportscenter and wondered: What happens to all the hats thrown on the ice at hockey games for hat tricks?
Well, a couple of days later, the fabulous and talented Greg Wyshynski, who apparently was reading my mind, asked a bunch of teams what they do with the hats. Different answers all around. Sometimes players dig through and keep the cool ones. Some throw them away. Some donate them.
The Blue Jackets? They have a humongous clear bin in the arena and pile all the hats from every hat trick in there. Pretty awesome.
The giant transparent hat bin: The Columbus Blue Jackets have a giant case on the main concourse of their arena that houses all the hats the team has collected since the franchise's first hat trick, according to Karen Davis of the Jackets. That means every trick from Geoff Sanderson(notes) in February 2001 through Rick Nash(notes) in March 2009.
