Toms River man mistakenly receives package meant for NHL star

A Toms River man got a surprise when he opened one of the FedEx packages he got recently. Inside it there were over a dozen hockey sticks, really big hockey sticks. It was a shipment intended for 6-foot-9 Washington Capitals star Zdeno Charo mistakenly sent to Ariel Ben-Abraham.

Ben-Abraham has his own business, CreateSupply.com, and he gets shipments from China all the time, so it wasn’t unusual to get a package, but the contents were surprising. Ariel told ESPN, "This has to take the cake as the strangest thing I've gotten by mistake, future Hall of Famer's sticks, for the tallest player in NHL history? That's crazy. Those odds don't even make sense."

He then posted a picture of the delivery on social media, tagging both Chara and the Capitals.

The picture went viral, generating 10,000 likes and 1,500 retweets. And that got some attention.

The shipment was from a sporting goods manufacturer called True Hockey and they contacted Ariel. He says they threatened him, telling ESPN, "He said he was going to report me. Report what? They dropped the box off and handed it to me. There's nothing really to report here, buddy," Ben-Abraham said. "I said, 'Brother, if I posted it to social media, I'm pretty sure you're going to get everything back.'"

The sticks are worth several thousand dollars, and the Capitals have made arrangements to pick them up and deliver them to Charo. By the way, Ariel Ben-Abraham told The Athletic, that while he follows the New York Rangers, he is really more of a basketball fan, specifically of the Knicks.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle. Any opinions expressed are Bill Doyle's own.