The Oldest Hockey Stick?

Earlier this month Bobby Rouillard put what he claimed to be the world's oldest hockey stick up for sale on eBay with an opening asking bid of $1 million.

The eBay auction garnered no bids, but plenty of attention, including much debate from hockey historians.

Scientists were able to date the wood the stick was made of back to the mid 1600s. And the way Rouillard sees it, the stick, which was carved all in one piece, was also carved in the mid 1600s, a full 150 to 200 years earlier than the earliest recorded evidence of hockey.

"That would make the stick older than the game itself! How could it be? The game wasn't invented 400 years ago," said Bill Fitsell, a founding member of the Society for International Hockey Research, in this newspaper article.

Some suggest the stick was carved much later, perhaps from an old beam of wood.

Rouillard is not so sure, pointing to evidence that Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq Indian tribes played a stick and ball game that mirrored the earliest forms hockey. British soldiers documented the game in the 1700s. Some believe the natives introduced the new comers to the ice game that eventually would become the game we so revere now.

One thing is for sure: this old piece of lumber could slash today's composite sticks in half in no time!