Christian Family Sticks to Business That It Knows Best

The directions from Roger Christian Sr. seemed a bit oversimplified, but then he is not a man of many words. “When you come down from Canada, it’s your first left,” he said on the telephone. “You can’t miss it.”

Sure enough, after crossing the Manitoba-Minnesota border -- and driving another six miles through forest and grassland -- one comes to the first stoplight and sees Christian Brothers Inc. on the left. It is a factory, and the product is hockey sticks because, frankly, this is a hockey family in what the locals like to call “Hockeytown, USA.”

The Christian brothers in question are Roger and Bill -- members of the 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey team that beat the Soviet Union and won the gold medal in Squaw Valley. Several months before Bill had the medal placed around his neck, his wife, Carol, gave birth to a son, David, who would grow up to play on the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that also beat the Soviets and won the gold medal in Lake Placid.

“Without the gold medal in 1960, I doubt we’d be in the hockey-stick business,” Bill said. “Well, we might be in the business, but it would be much tougher. And with the ’80 team, it helped Christian Brothers a lot. It’s given us credibility and worldwide publicity.”

Now in his seventh season with the Washington Capitals, Dave Christian is the only player in the NHL with his own brand of hockey stick. He also gets the best of the white ash that comes through the factory.

“I get pretty good service,” Dave said with a laugh. Capitals goalie Don Beaupre uses a Christian Brothers model and several players use their blades.

“It’s a personal thing and I’m not out there trying to convert people to Christian sticks,” said Dave, who gets his own shipment of two dozen sticks every three weeks. But if they want to try something new, Christian can call the factory to get them a sample. He also can pass on tidbits about other players’ reactions to particular sticks.

Players make their living with hockey sticks, and thus care deeply about them, often adjusting the shape of the blade daily with the help of a propane torch. So if the red light doesn’t go on, they often blame the equipment.

“Some are finicky,” Roger Jr. said, not including his cousin, Dave. “If they’re not scoring, they’ll change the stick.”

The idea of trying to make a buck off the Christian name came from Hal Bakke. He and Roger are married to twin sisters, Joan and Jean, respectively.

“I’m not the hockey player, but I did come up with the slogan ‘Hockey sticks by hockey players,’ ” Bakke said while seated in his office. He asked us if we wanted to do something with the name, so we put it on a hockey stick,” Roger said. “It turned out to be a pretty good name for a hockey stick.”

After high school and hockey -- they also played on the 1964 Olympic team -- Roger and Bill followed in their father’s footsteps and went into carpentry. Even after incorporating the stick business in 1964, they continued to work construction jobs to pay the bills until the early 1970s. Now, according to Bill, the company produces about 2,100 sticks a day and has yearly revenues of about $4 million. They have a toll-free, 800 number for customers, and while on hold, a caller will hear a tape of the 1960 gold-medal game. “Some people call just to hear the tape,” said Roger Sr., whose son and namesake helps run the factory.

The elder Roger is 54 years old with sleepy, blue eyes that are usually open before dawn. He likes the hands-on work of the factory and might be almost as proud of the paint blotches and sawdust on his red sweat shirt as he is of his gold medal. “Bill does all the traveling and the public relations,” Roger said. “I didn’t want to be a part of that. He’s got more of the gift of gab. I’m quiet.”

Bill is not a babbler, but he is the one in the background of the picture of Ronald Reagan taking a slap shot with a Christian Brothers stick on the White House lawn in 1987. Bill talks with manufacturing representatives and team trainers, who hear the complaints players might have with another brand of stick.

The white ash used in most sticks comes from western Pennsylvania, by way of St. Paul, Minn., where it is dried in a kiln. The popple that is used in fiberglass sticks comes from Ontario. Many players use aluminum shafts, and the Christians make the wooden blades for them.

The first step is the handle or shaft. A workman will look for the best ones -- no knots and the straightest grain -- and pull them out for the professionals, Dave Christian in particular. Maybe only six out of every 1,600 will go in his rack.

After the shaft’s edges are rounded off and a slit cut in the end, a raw blade is attached with glue and a heavy press.

Then comes the process of shaping the blade. There are general patterns for mass-produced sticks, but each pro player has his own. The patterns hang like sides of beef in a sort of library in one corner of the factory. The younger Roger oversees the handling of the sticks for the pros and he keeps a Rolodex with players’ names, location of their pattern and any other pertinent information.

“They’re like snowflakes,” Roger Jr. said of patterns. “Every one is a little different. Once we have the pattern, they’ll get essentially the identical stick every time.”

Attempts are made to cut down on waste. When making replacement blades for aluminum sticks, two are worked on either end of a handle. The extra wood from handles is cut up and used as plug in the other end of aluminum sticks. The sawdust is sold to the Marvin Windows factory across the street to heat the boilers.

Though the Christians long ago decided to trade on their name, they haven’t sold out on Warroad. Three families live in three -- mostly wood, of course -- houses on a seven-acre plot of land bought years ago by Bill and Roger’s father.

In Bill’s house, the basement walls are filled with plaques, posters and proclamations, while the floor is covered with what might be the most patriotic carpet ever laid. “Red, white and blue are not easy colors to find in carpet,” Dave’s sister, Jeri, said during a tour.

This town of about 1,800 people is quite isolated. Sitting on the shore of the Lake of the Woods, it’s just under three hours southeast of Winnipeg. Along the way on the Trans-Canada Highway, one passes great expanses of fields for hay and grain, and a sign claiming to be at the longitudinal center of Canada (98 degrees 48 minutes 35 seconds). The winters are brutal. Once in Warroad, one finds as many stoplights as indoor ice rinks -- two.

“When I grew up there, there were no stoplights and probably only 1,000 people,” Dave Christian said. “During the winter the river was frozen over and you had all the ice you could ever want. The door to the arena was always open and there always seemed to be a game going on. When a few people wanted to use the rink for public skating, the manager would come on and say, ‘Get the sticks off the ice.’ As soon as those people left, the sticks were back and the game started. The availability of ice was unlimited.”

Lots of Warroad kids still play hockey, and they usually do it with Christian Brothers sticks, though now and then a rebel will wield another brand. “They don’t last long,” Bill Christian said with a good-natured laugh. “They don’t win many friends.”

Because so many Americans were thrilled by the victory in Lake Placid, they were disappointed when the 1984 and 1988 Olympic teams struggled. Bill Christian said he was generally supportive of what the national governing body, USA Hockey, was doing as far as developing players, though he did not like the idea of pros playing in the Olympics and he was concerned that fighting in the NHL is helping to poison amateur youth hockey.

“I think amateur hockey has made great strides,” Bill Christian said. “There are more kids involved, but it’s got a long way to go. We’ve got to clean up the game and kids have to have more fun.” Bill and some of his family were in Winnipeg recently when Dave and the Capitals played the Jets. Besides catching up on family matters, they talked about sticks. Dave scored 34 goals for the Capitals last season, but he had only one the first 13 games. So while he was in Winnipeg, he and his father talked about changing the angle between the handle and the ice.

“I told Dad to load it up with goals,” Dave said jokingly, knowing full well all of the real ingredients from summers of work in the factory. “He forgot in the last shipment. He told me there were goals in all of them.”