When Morgan Rielly celebrates a big moment in his life, the Maple Leafs defenceman does so with a bottle of wine.
Mostly, but not exclusively, a Pinot Noir from Burgundy, preferably from Aux Echezeaux vineyard in the Gevrey-Chambertin region. Some Italian wines as well.
“I didn’t expect to have that bug of a collector, but I certainly do,” said the 31-year-old blueliner. “As a young person, I didn’t really see why or the point of it. And as I got older, I became more sentimental.”
He has commemorated his 2023 marriage to figure skater Tessa Virtue, the 2025 birth of their son and gone back to buy wine from his draft year of 2012.
“It’s really not about drinking it or anything like that,” said Rielly. “But I’ve really enjoyed learning more about it, so the collection is growing. With these special occasions that I’ve been lucky enough to experience over the last, like, three, four years, five years, I’ve tried to collect things that mark those occasions.”
Rielly figures he caught the bug from his early days as a Leaf. Now he’s the team connoisseur.
“It’s actually very impressive to have dinner with him,” said captain Auston Matthews. “We always just hand him the wine list.”
It’s to the point where Rielly is teaching others, notably star forward William Nylander.
“I don’t know anything, but he’s going to teach me,” said Nylander. “You can get some really good bottles, too, at a really good price. Sometimes some of the more expensive ones are not necessarily that good, either. You’ve just gotta find the right ones.”
For Nylander, it’s a journey away from what he usually collects: hockey sticks. He has his own significant ones, but also from Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
“I’ll find somewhere to (display) them one day,” said Nylander.
Some obsessions are more offbeat. Forward Steven Lorentz and his wife have been collecting matchboxes for three years.
“If we go to a hotel or stay in a different city, we’ll ask for a little box of matches and then we have a bowl at our house and we just throw them in,” said Lorentz. “If we go to, like, light a candle, we’ll pull a thing of matches out. We’ll look at it and reminisce.”
Centre Nicolas Roy decided on shot glasses.
“It was either that or a coffee cup, and the shot glasses are smaller so they’re easier to pack,” said Roy. “If you have a party with your family, you can remember the different places you went. It puts a nice smile on your face.”
Forward Matthew Knies and defenceman Philippe Myers are more into guitars.
“I have a few Yamahas in Epiphone, and I just got a new Taylor,” said Knies, who plays country music. “Hopefully I’ll move on to wine and watches.”
Goalie Joseph Woll has Star Wars-themed Lego sets (the All-Terrain Armoured Transports from Hoth) as well as a pretty good, goalie-based hockey card collection. Carey Price was his favourite, but his prize is a Miikka Kiprusoff rookie card.
“This is for hockey nerds. It’s a rookie patch auto out of the Cup,” he said. “It’s a nice one.”
The Cup is a high-end series by Upper Deck. The rookie patch auto includes an authentic piece of game-used memorabilia (the patch) and a hard-signed autograph (the auto) by the player during their rookie year.
“I was happy when I opened that one,” said Woll.
Winger Bobby McMann collected hockey and Pokémon cards as a kid, and has a Crosby figurine in its original box.
Forwards Max Domi and Nick Robertson are among the Leafs’ many stick hounds. Robertson got his first Crosby stick last year, which he keeps at his house in Michigan: “Tucked away, no one can take it.”
Domi started when dad Tie, the former Leafs enforcer, brought him to morning skates.
“He’d bring me a Pavel Datsyuk or Henrik Zetterberg and even a Mario Lemieux,” said Domi.
“Still have all those. It was a chance to meet these guys when I was young. So now that I’m playing against guys and playing with guys, I collect sticks, for sure. It’s just cool to have my buddies and family come over and they get to pick up (Zdeno) Chara’s stick or Joe Thornton’s stick. It’s like, ‘This is what they use.’ It’s pretty cool. Hockey fans like that stuff. It’s all the details.”
Speaking of details, that’s six-time all-star centre John Tavares’ thing.
“Like name bars when you go to different events, like all-star. I try to keep all that stuff,” said Tavares. “Towels, locker carpets, just for the logos. The St. Pats game, I always ask trainers for the extra stuff.
“Different things that are details of the league, things to have.”
Most of his stuff is in storage for now. Tavares added that he absolutely does not collect watches: “I’m too scared to lose it. You take it off and on so much, I would lose it.”
That doesn’t bother Matthews, the team’s eminent watch collector.
“You start out early and then you collect a little bit all the time, and it becomes a little bit more fun. We’ve got a couple guys who like to do that as well.”
Matthews circles back to Rielly.
“He’s got good taste,” said Matthews. “He took me under his wing a lot my first couple years. You learn a lot, whether it’s watches or food or restaurants, wine. He’s one of those people that knows a little bit about everything. That’s a pretty good quality to have.”
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