Blues present Berube with special piece of art for Stanley Cup victory

Craig Berube got to relive the St. Louis Blues' Stanley Cup championship one more time Friday, thanks in part to his players.

Prior to the game against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Enterprise Center, Berube was gifted a one-of-a-kind championship-themed present, a piece 3 feet tall by 3 1/2 feet wide that includes a stick from each player on the championship team.
"To me, that's a nice piece, for sure," Berube said. "Great artwork. I think it's a team award. I'd like to hang it up in the locker room, to be honest with you, but I'm not sure that's the right place for it. Very special. To get a guy to make something like that for me was nice.
"The sticks with the names on it are unreal because they're the guys that went to war for two and a half months and won a Stanley Cup. I'll never forget those guys."
Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo said everyone has different things they took to further memorialize the Blues' first championship.
"I think we've all had something from the Stanley Cup that we've kept, right?" Pietrangelo said. "I grabbed a sign from down here. Everyone's got something in their basement hiding. That'll be something cool sitting in his."
Berube's 'something cool' is the latest stick-based piece made by David Hoening, a Columbus-based artist who advertises his collection at
Reclaimedsticks.com
.

Hoening is a former hockey player and now a hockey parent. He's also environmentally conscious and gets annoyed at seeing broken hockey sticks tossed in a trash can and forgotten.
"Sticks when I played were all wood, so it wasn't a big deal," Hoening said. "Today they're all carbon fiber and you go to games and you see teams chucking sticks in the trash, and through my architecture and construction background I'm well aware of the green initiative and saving the environment and I believe in that wholeheartedly."
When a friend asked for a Detroit Red Wings-themed piece for his home, Hoening incorporated broken sticks into a 4-foot-long metal Red Wings logo.
Not long after, Hoening began receiving requests for using broken sticks in other hockey-themed pieces. That led to him making a few pieces for the Blue Jackets' annual CannonBall fundraiser, which incorporated broken sticks into the designs.
Those pieces caught the eye of several Blue Jackets players, among them forwards Boone Jenner and Cam Atkinson, and Hoening made them personalized pieces.

The piece he made for Jenner features the Blue Jackets' third logo, with broken sticks making up the spokes of the wheel on the cannon.
"He did a great job with it," Jenner said. "Having the sticks in it gives it that extra little value. ... It's only been up a couple of weeks, but people think it's really cool. They want to know how they can get one. I tell them to call Dave."
Hoening also made items for a Blues charity event, where they were discovered by Dominique Pino, a fashion designer and Berube's girlfriend.
She was intrigued by Hoening's designs and asked if he could make her a clutch handbag out of discarded sticks for the 2019 NHL Awards in Las Vegas, where she accompanied Berube, who had been nominated for the Jack Adams Award as the top coach in the NHL.

Pino loved the design and proudly showed it off on the red carpet.
"I thought it was awesome," she said. "What I design with is a lot of sustainable fabrics, and being that it's a reclaimed item … but on the other side it was a super-cool little clutch that definitely I think a lot of hockey moms and hockey girlfriends or wives would like to have."
Hoening is working with Pino on expanding the line of clutches, plus other hockey-related items. All of it will continue to use reclaimed sticks.
"Using as many hockey sticks as I can get my hands on in my art work is my driving force right now," Hoening said. "Every rink I go to with both of my kids I immediately go to the desk or the Zamboni driver and say, 'Hey, you guys got any sticks you don't want?' They'll say yes, they'll say no, they'll say they're out back in the dumpster. And I will load my car up with as many sticks as I can get my hands on."
NHL.com independent correspondents Louie Korac and Craig Merz contributed to this report