Five TVs and a floor made of sticks: a look inside the ultimate fan cave

Kenn Shaw wanted a place to store all the hockey merchandise he had and now, three years later, he has created the Ultimate Hockey Fan Cave. The Cave has become the place to watch the game Shaw’s community and has five TVs, two bars, hockey helmet lights, replica trophies with an entire floor made of composite sticks.

Every hockey fan has their preferred place to watch the game, be it kicking back at home, huddled with friends around one television or sitting at a sports bar around other fanatics. For Kenn Shaw, he took the best of both worlds and created the go-to place to watch games with family and friends. Shaw, with the help of friends and family, built what he calls the Ultimate Hockey Fan Cave. While other fans have jerseys hung and framed or team-specific room designs, Shaw has decked out his entire hockey haven from wall to wall and ceiling to ceiling with sticks, pucks, helmets, jerseys and even a few replica trophies. “As your get kids into hockey, you just start collecting stuff, and before I knew it I had too much,” Shaw said. “I started building hockey stick furniture and anything I could out of hockey sticks. My son said, ‘We’ve got to have a spot here for it, Dad,’ and my wife told me to build something.” That led to the Cave, which is a work of hockey-loving art. It has five televisions, two bars, more than a dozen jerseys, table hockey and shuffleboard, just to name a few things. There are even hockey helmets that have been converted into lights. In addition, almost every piece of furniture has been built out of composite hockey sticks. That includes the floor.

That’s right: the entire floor is made of old, discarded sticks. By his estimation, anywhere from 1,400 to 1,800 were used in the making of the floor. The composite sticks were cut, laid out and attached to a subfloor and the result is incredible. “It took about three or four years just to collect all these sticks,” Shaw said. “When you build a floor like this, because hockey sticks get narrower near the blade, you can’t use the whole stick. You can only use a quarter, half or three quarters of the shaft. We moved them around and had to find the design. The pictures don’t do it justice.”

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(Video via 98.5 The Ocean) Once the first-time guests take their eyes off the incredible floor, though, it’s hard not to be drawn to the replica Stanley Cup. The two-foot wooden creation is beautiful and has been signed by a number of NHL greats, including Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Ron Hextall. But the story behind the Cup may be more interesting than the 70-some signatures on it. It began when his son, then two years old, asked for a Stanley Cup to celebrate with during a game of street hockey. Without a suitable option to give his son, Shaw purchased a lathe which his father-in-law used to make a two-foot tall replica of the Cup. The creation took about six weeks, but it would eventually lead Shaw to NHL headquarters in New York where the construction worker-turned-businessman gave a presentation to the NHL about the replica Cups. Sadly, the idea never really caught on. “The story goes that everyone seems to get wealthy, but not us,” Shaw said. “The NHL gets their piece. I went to trade shows and everything and thought I would get out of the construction trade. It just never panned out.” But the Cave has become Shaw’s new venture, and he’s always coming up with ways to improve it. The most recent pieces in the Cave are Murray Bannerman and Ed Giacomin jerseys, but before he begins undertaking any big time renovations, Shaw wanted to upgrade security following a break-in. With that taken care of, though, he now plans to move on to his next goal: a concrete pad that resembles ice, complete with skate marks and all. And whether he asks for it or not, there’s almost certainly going to be someone from the community pitching in. But Shaw has a gift in store for all of those who’ve helped over the past three years. “I kept a list of all the people who helped with the labor or donating stuff and it ended up being about 70 friends,” he said. “I kept their names, wrote them down and the names are at a trophy place right no. I’m getting them put on one of our replica Stanley Cups to say thank you.”