Nestled at the bottom of Teuvo Teravainen's little red-and-black travel bag sits the puck he used to score his first goal with Rockford of the AHL.
The sentimental type, huh?
"I just have it," Teravainen said. "I don't know why."
How about the puck from his first NHL goal with the Blackhawks?
"I don't actually know where my first-goal puck is," the 21-year-old Finn said. "I might have lost it somewhere. I saw it after the game, but after that I don't know what happened to that puck."
While some NHL players are clearly not into keeping memorabilia from their careers, others began collecting items from an early age and continue to do so.
When he was in the second grade, Jonathan Toews' parents once took him out of class to meet and get an autograph from his childhood idol, Wayne Gretzky.
"He was my favorite player," the Hawks captain said. "I was obsessed with hockey at that age, and I had Gretzky posters and jerseys and hockey sticks _ all that stuff. The Kings were in (Winnipeg) to play the Jets, and my dad's friend from work knew where to get autographs. My dad and my mom took my brother and me and we were wearing Kings jerseys. We got an autograph."
Still have it?
"For sure," Toews said. "Though I don't know where it is. It's probably stuffed away in a box somewhere back home."
Like many of his teammates, Toews collects his own memorabilia but doesn't have much displayed in his Chicago home.
"I have a lot of stuff collected over the years from the Winter Classic games, the All-Star Games, the Olympics and the Stanley Cup," Toews said. "It piles up in the house, and people are like, 'Why don't you hang that up?' I'm not going to hang that up in my own house. Not yet, anyway."
Defenseman Duncan Keith has myriad collectibles displayed in a room that "I don't go in a whole lot."
"I think everybody tries to collect some mementos or keepsakes," he said. "We're proud of what we've been able to accomplish here and the awards that we get."
Most of Keith's prized possessions are trophies accumulated throughout his childhood and fill up his bedroom in his parents' house in Penticton, British Columbia.
"It's cool to look back at all the trophies my parents kept for me from over the years," Keith said. "To be able to bring the Stanley Cup down in my room a couple of years ago in Penticton and put it with all my trophies from minor hockey made for a pretty cool picture.
"I kind of look back at some of those trophies I won in peewee and bantam and minor hockey and I almost enjoy looking at those more than I do some of the more recent ones. In some respects, it's nice to reflect."
In the last few weeks, Patrick Kane has added to his collection on an almost daily basis. The winger has kept the pucks from when he became the American-born player with the longest point streak in NHL history at 19 games, the puck from his franchise-record 22nd consecutive contest with a point and the one used to score his 600th career point Dec. 8.
"I have some different things like All-Star Game helmets, gloves and sticks that I've saved over the years," Kane said. "Right now, it's just kind of hanging up all pieced together in one little area. Eventually, as I grow older, it will probably be something where I create a little room for it."
While there are the tales of former Hawks Antti Niemi and Viktor Stalberg not recalling where they keep their Stanley Cup championship rings from 2010 and '13, respectively, there are plenty more of players who collect and display memorabilia, usually from milestone NHL goals.
"The team does that for us," winger Andrew Shaw said. "They put it in a case with pictures of our first game or pictures of the goal. I kept that and sticks. I kept my helmet from last season, and the team signed jerseys after we won the Cup."
Shaw also collects memorabilia from other sports and counts signed Muhammad Ali boxing shorts and a helmet signed by the 1985 Bears among his favorites.
"I also have a Wendel Clark signed card he gave me when I was younger," Shaw said. "I was probably 10 when I got that."
Joel Quenneville said he has accumulated objects from his 13 seasons as an NHL defenseman and storied coaching career, but the collection is not as extensive as some.
"I played with Chico Resch _ he had his own museum along the way," Quenneville said.
"I've got some good mementos. I like those things that we picked up about a week ago that has the Cup with the name of everybody on it," Quenneville said of the 13-inch replica Stanley Cup the organization gave to many employees last week. "That's the prize of my collection."
Toews had an immediate answer as to his favorite personal memorabilia.
"The Stanley Cup rings are pretty cool," he said. "There are only so many guys out there with those."
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