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Miracle of Nice brings hockey stick back home

Jon Yates | What's Your Problem?

January 13, 2009

Kalan Plew admires the hockey stick returned to him Monday by Robert Pappert, a North Carolina dentist who unknowingly bought it from the man who took it from Kalan. (Tribune photo by Charles Cherney / January 12, 2009)

It was a young hockey fan's dream come true: After the Winter Classic between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings at Wrigley Field on New Year's Day, a Detroit player motioned to Kalan Plew, then handed him the stick he had used in the game.

Moments later, the Gurnee teenager and Red Wings fan was in tears. Just outside the stadium, a man in an official-looking jacket told Kalan he could not keep the stick, took it and disappeared.

The next day, Kalan's father, Marc Plew, e-mailed the Tribune, hoping the paper could help the boy retrieve his cherished souvenir. The Problem Solver managed an interim solution, described in a Jan. 6 column: The Wings agreed to provide Kalan with a replacement stick from the player, star winger Henrik Zetterberg.

Now, more than a week after the incident, the odyssey of Kalan and his hockey stick has a proper ending. The two were reunited Monday. And so the full story can be told.

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Call it the Miracle of Nice.

Kalan's stick had fallen into the hands of Robert Pappert, a North Carolina dentist who was at Wrigley with his wife, a Red Wings fan. In a stadium washroom about a half-hour after the game, Pappert bumped into a man with a hockey stick used by Zetterberg. Pappert said a conversation led to a negotiation, and he paid the man $100 for the souvenir.

Pappert said that he had no clue at the time that the stick had been given by Zetterberg to someone else and then taken away.

"If I had any idea that that was a bad dude, I would have beaten him with that stick before I left the bathroom," said Pappert, 45, about the man who sold him the pilfered souvenir. "I had a wonderful time with it for four or five days, but it has to go back to who really owns it."

Having learned the background on the stick from a Web version of the Tribune column, Pappert contacted the Problem Solver on Friday, who, along with the Plews, pieced together much of the incident's chronology.

The stick's journey began after the final seconds ticked off the clock in the Winter Classic outdoor hockey spectacular, which the Red Wings won, 6-4. Kalan, 14, ran from his $25 seat above the third-base dugout to the spot where Detroit players were exiting the ice. He hoped to slap some of the players high-fives. One of Red Wings, Zetterberg, made eye contact with Kalan, then handed the teenager his stick.

Kalan said he was exiting the stadium when a man in a blue Winter Classic coat approached him and said he could not carry the stick without parental guidance. The man took the stick from him, Kalan said, then vanished. The teen scrambled to find his dad, who was waiting nearby in the crowd.

The father and son then went to the stadium's customer service desk and asked if the stick was there. It wasn't.

At roughly the same time, Pappert was walking down from his seats in the 400 level with his wife. A Chicago native, Pappert said he had flown to Chicago for the game.

Before leaving the stadium, Pappert stopped in the restroom, where he saw a man with a game-used hockey stick. Like Kalan, Pappert described the man as wearing a blue Winter Classic coat.

"I go, 'Hey buddy, I'll give you some money for that stick,' " Pappert said Friday. "He said, 'Not this stick. I'm selling it on eBay.' "

Pappert said the man then told him it was Zetterberg's stick and showed him the number 40 printed on it. Pappert said his wife had worn a Zetterberg jersey to the game.

"If he had named anybody else, I probably would have just let it go," Pappert said. "I had one moment to make the decision. I took $100 out of my pocket. … He motioned me over and said, 'You've got a deal.' "

Pappert, a Blackhawks fan, left the bathroom and proudly handed the stick to his wife.

As they left the stadium, Pappert, his wife and friends passed the stick around, shaking people's hands and high-fiving.

Kalan's dad, Marc Plew, said he saw a man exiting the stadium with Zetterberg's stick and confronted him. The man said he found the stick in the bathroom and wasn't going to give it up, Plew said.