Hockey stick snow shovel

We were talking about snowblowers today and my freind Slava commented that he had to shovel all the time when he was a kid. In fact, he told us that his father didn't used to buy snow-shovels, instead he used to make them out of a piece of 1/4 plywood and a broken hockey stick for Slava to clear snow with. I'm trying to imagine how that could work. Apparently it's like having to shovel with a picket sign, or those big platters on a stick they use to put dough in pizza ovens.

I've assembled a reasonable facimile in Photoshop just to grasp this particular invention(except I used a $300 Eason Synergy stick, and it isn't even broken!). Poor Slava. It must have been hard growing up in Mother Russia (I mean montreal)..