Photo: Rick Osentoski

Last season, one of my favorite all-time blog moments happened when RMNB readers combined to reunite Mike Green with a fleet of his Easton CNT Stealth sticks. The twig, which Green used to score 31 goals in 2008-09, was discontinued about a decade ago. The superstitious defenseman said in interviews he’s never used a better stick.

“I don’t know if it was the manufacturing or what, but it just made for a really good stick,” Green said then. “Over the years, maybe they changed the technology or the balance and it’s just not the same. For me, these are perfect.”

Green has continued to use the bright blue relic in Detroit. On Monday, Green’s former teammate, Alex Ovechkin, promised to give the stick the respect it deserves.

Ovi on Mike Green: ‘I’m probably gonna slash his Easton stick.’ But that’s his favorite: ‘Yeah, I’m gonna slash it’ pic.twitter.com/VCJhuAGZSP — Chuck Gormley (@ChuckGormleyCSN) November 9, 2015

This is both funny and stressful. Behind the scenes, it took a lot of emails, tweets, direct messages, eBay searches, phone calls, and text messages to reunite Green with about 20 of his old sticks or versions similar to it. Every time I saw one of them break during a Caps game, part of me died.

But Mike, don’t worry. If Ovi goes rogue, I still have another one at home waiting for you.

A photo posted by Ian Oland (@ianrmnb) on Jul 27, 2015 at 4:30pm PDT

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Red Wings