Historic hockey stick up for auction

If they’re searching for a Lucky Loonie-like talisman to turn their Olympic fortunes around, the members of Canada’s snake-bitten men’s hockey team may want to get their hands on a magical piece of Winter Games history – one exuding a sense of Canadian invincibility – that’s just been put up for sale.

An 86-year-old hockey stick signed by every member of Canada’s 1924 Olympic championship squad has been placed on the online auction block this week by a Quebec-based seller of sports memorabilia.

Made from a prehistoric material that’s little known among today’s Kevlar-wielding Olympian icemen – wood – the vintage stick was discovered in the early 1990s in the basement of a Toronto home with an unknown link to the Toronto Granites, a top amateur club that represented Canada at the first Winter Games in Chamonix, France, in 1924.

"The family thought it would be fitting to offer it for auction at the same time as the Olympics," Marc Juteau, president of Classic Auctions, told Canwest News Service. "It’s a great story and a fantastic stick."

The Olympic stick isn’t the only historic hockey artifact being auctioned during the 2010 Winter Games. A stick from Ontario – said to date from the 1850s and touted as the oldest in existence – is on display in Vancouver and is to be sold on Feb. 28.

The so-called Rutherford Stick was sold previously to a Canadian collector in 2006 for $1.9 million and has been exhibited at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

The 12 members of the winning Olympic team in 1924 signed the Spalding stick along its blade and shaft, adding the message "With Best Thanks" and the title "Olympic (Granites) Worlds Amateur Hockey Champions 1924."

Canada easily brought home the gold that year – as it did in five of the first six Winter Olympic hockey tournaments before a 50-year drought set in between 1952 and 2002.

That was the year a Canadian dollar coin frozen into the ice at the Salt Lake City Games is said to have given Team Canada a supernatural edge in recapturing the glory of 1924, when the Granites outscored their opponents 110 to 3 in five games.

Among the signatures on the antique stick is that of Harry Watson, the Hockey Hall of Fame sharpshooter who set several scoring records at the Chamonix Games that have never been broken. His Olympic feats include a 13-goal performance against Switzerland and a hat-trick in the gold-medal match against the U.S. that pushed his five-game total to a "preposterous 36 goals," according to the International Ice Hockey Federation.

Those two countries have given Team Canada a severe shock at the current 2010 Games in Vancouver, with unheralded Switzerland forcing the host nation into a shootout on Thursday before the U.S. recorded its dramatic 5-3 win over Canada on Sunday night.

With Canada’s superstar-packed team facing elimination against Germany on Tuesday, it’s clear the dynastic era that produced this country’s 33-0 win over Switzerland at Chamonix is long over.

Notably, the unstoppable Watson’s 13 goals in that game equal the total output for Team Canada in its three games so far at this year’s Olympic tournament.

As they begin their uphill skate for gold on Tuesday, top Canadian scoring threats such as Sidney Crosby, Jarome Iginla and Dany Heatley will have to draw their inspiration from photos of the ’24 Olympic relic.

It won’t be sold until the online auction ends on March 16.