Why 37 NHL goalies changed pads this year: Inside the high-stakes game of hockey equipment branding

One season after winning the Vezina Trophy, Connor Hellebuyck did something unexpected for a goalie at the top of his game: He switched his pads.

After using CCM-branded gear for the first five years of his NHL career, the Winnipeg Jets goalie is now wearing pads from True Hockey. He’s not alone. In something of a major shift in the goaltending world, the previously little known company seemingly grabbed a large market share overnight. Thirty-seven goalies on NHL rosters or taxi squads are wearing True pads this season, many of them switching from CCM.

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Why did so many goalies switch?

The truth is the pads didn’t change at all.

Hellebuyck’s pads, just like they’ve been since 2010, were handcrafted just outside of Montreal by Lefevre Inc., a goalie equipment manufacturer that used to be partnered with CCM and was bought by True in 2020.

It’s an important deal in the hockey world and sheds light on the battle for market share in the hockey equipment business and how marketing and branding play a role in shaping the competition.

In the whimsical world of goaltending, the Lefebvre family is the equivalent of Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs in “The Wizard of Oz.”

The Lefebvres — Patrick, Véronic and Michel — are behind the curtain, pulling and sewing the strings, while their public presence has always been behind a marketing giant, such as Reebok or CCM, and now True.

Pads made by Lefevre (the company name dropped the B from Lefebvre) have been a fixture in the NHL since 1987. The five all-time winningest goalies — Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy, Roberto Luongo, Ed Belfour, and Marc-Andre Fleury — all used Lefevre pads during their careers.

Roy was the first to popularize Lefevre pads, which were Koho-branded pads in the late 1980s. The craftsmanship of those initial pads, combined with Roy’s success, turned Lefevre into a fixture for NHL goaltenders, particularly those from Quebec in the early 1990s.

While Lefevre would work directly with goalies on the pads, their hands-on approach was a selling point to NHL goalie customers, they left branding and marketing and mass production to a larger partner company.

“We’ve always been focused on the product first, that’s the most important thing,” Patrick Lefebvre told The Athletic. “We are pad makers, not marketers, for us it was always about making the best thing for goalies and working with the goalies. They know who we are, the goalies do.”

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Hellebuyck got his first pair of custom-made Lefevre pads, then branded as Reebok, in 2010 when he was a senior at Walled Lake High School in Michigan. The pad changed his style, helped him become the more self-described “boring” goalie in his stance, and it was part of the groundwork for an eventual NHL career. The Jets goaltender has tried other pads in practice before, just to see what else is on the market, but said nothing has been able to compare to the fit he gets from Lefevre and more importantly the ability to call Patrick directly and discuss potential tweaks to equipment.

“Goalies are going to have lots of opinions on equipment and how pads should or shouldn’t do something,” Hellebuyck said. “Something they do, which I think is great, is take all of that and are able to figure out what feedback actually makes sense to use in pad performance. For example, a couple of years ago I was worried about consistency in a glove, so Pat tried on every one of my gloves personally before they were sent out. What other company is going to do that for their client?”

That reputation is why larger companies have tried to partner with Lefevre to build their goalie pads, while Lefevre has remained largely behind the scenes to avoid the marketing and licensing costs that would come with attacking the larger market.

Brands that appear in NHL games pay the league a licensing fee of $125,000 per category, according to a True spokesperson.

Goalie pads and gloves fall under the same category, while players’ sticks, skates, helmets, and gloves also cost a brand $125,000 to have licensed within an NHL game. A company that operates as a full head-to-toe equipment provider in the NHL represents more than $600,000 in revenue to the league per season.

The NHL, through a spokesperson, declined to comment or confirm the cost of licensing fees.

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If a company hasn’t paid the licensing fees the gear can still be used in the NHL, but it has to come with blank branding. That’s what Lefevre did during the 2020 NHL playoffs, when they were between partners and 10 NHL goalies took completely blank pads into Toronto or Edmonton.

Lefevre and Sport Maska Inc., the parent company for CCM, had a 10-year-agreement that expired on Dec. 31, 2019. During that time CCM pads would say they were powered by Lefevre, while the companies agreed to exchange ideas and best practices about creating goalie gear.

Near the end of the deal, Lefevre was informed CCM was no longer interested in working with them and would start to make their own pads for NHL goalies. It was a somewhat amicable split until Lefevre watched the 2020 world juniors and felt CCM was continuing to make similar pads using Lefevre designs.

A suit was filed on Jan. 9, 2020 in Quebec Superior Court that alleged that CCM was continuing to make similar pads using Lefevre technology after their 10-year partnership had come to a close on Dec. 31, 2019. Lefevre shared designs and innovations with CCM during that partnership, but according to the suit, those designs would remain Lefevre property after the deal expired.

Evidence was presented showing photos comparing Lefevre product and CCM product produced outside the partnership, and the suit was dismissed by Justice Fréderic Bachand, who said the photo wasn’t enough to grant an emergency injunction. Lefevre and True both declined to comment on what happened after that suit was dismissed, while Jean-Luc Couture, the lawyer for Lefevre, wrote in an email to The Athletic, “We do not have any comments to make on this case at the present time.”

At this same time, Lefevre had turned to Instagram to help launch the business while working in the background on a potential sale to True. Instagram postings caught the attention of both Carter Hart and Sergei Bobrovsky, who reached out to Lefevre about continuing to use their pads even after the relationship with CCM had ended.

“The time we were without a partner and the fact we had goalies reaching out to work with us, that was really encouraging and I think spoke to our product” Lefebvre said. “That I think helped us even further and proved we were a company that someone like True would be interested in.”

True used to be like Lefevre.

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It was a company that focused only on top-tier clients, and worked in partnership with larger brands, before an ownership change in 2011 led to re-shifting its focus and trying to grab larger market share and branding.

In the hockey world, True wants to compete with more established brands at both the professional and minor league levels.

It started in golf, where True Sports went from producing golf shafts for other companies, to moving into the public space with more consumer-facing products. True has had sticks in the NHL since 2000, but they were branded under other company names, while True Hockey was launched as a consumer-facing brand in 2014 with a one-piece stick.

In the seven years since the brand has grown and turned into a head-to-toe outfitter for players, and now with the acquisition of Lefevre, goalies as well. Dave McNally, Senior Director of Global Sales and Marketing at True Sports Inc., said True has had an eye on the goalie space since 2016, when it acquired VH Footwear in 2016, which already had large market share amongst NHL goalies when it came to skates. Hellebuyck, for example, reached out to True and became their first sponsored goaltender after the company bought VH Footwear.

Fifty-seven NHL goalies currently use True skates, according to Gear Geek that represents 64.8 percent of NHL goalies, but skates aren’t a flashy billboard for a brand like pads and gloves.

Getting “TRUE” emblazoned on pads, the largest billboard for an equipment advertiser on a player’s person, was the next step and crucial to attacking the consumer space. As this became a priority for True, the long-term partnership between Lefevre and CCM was coming to an end.

McNally called it the opportunity of a lifetime for True when Lefevre informed them it was interested in discussing a potential sale.

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“It was a turnkey operation, they had NHL exposure and the technology and the ability to scale that technology,” McNally said. “They checked a lot of boxes and when it kind of fell on our lap, it just made so much sense that it was hard for us to not jump all of this opportunity.”

Now, True has the launching pad to attack the consumer space. True and Lefevre are launching a custom line for consumers that aren’t NHL goalies, in April with plans to have mass-produced pads on the shelves in 2022.

Those mass-produced pads won’t be made in Montreal by Lefevre, but will have the ability to use the Lefevre name when it comes to design. It’s a similar approach to what CCM and Reebok had done prior when partnering with the Lefevre, a consumer can buy pads that look like an NHL goalie’s, but it’s not made by Lefevre unless ordering something custom.

In the end it’s the ideal setup for Lefevre, who gets to continue focusing on custom, hand-made products for NHL goalies and other custom clients, while True is able to flood the consumer market place with pads, while still being able to use NHL goalies as an active, living billboard.

“It allows both of us to specialize in what we are best at,” Lefebvre said. “We have always been about the goalies first and working with them closely, we can now keep doing that for a long time.”

On a whole, True’s strides within the hockey equipment world haven’t gone unnoticed, and as the brand has pushed into the goalie space it’s becoming more of a competitor for some of the more established names like CCM and Bauer.

Zachary Jarom is an operations specialist and photographer for Pro Stock Hockey, which sells overstocked and used professional equipment. Pro Stock Hockey currently works with 27 of the 31 NHL teams, essentially buying gear from equipment managers, while also working closely with AHL and ECHL franchises.

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“They aren’t top three, they have a ways to go before catching Bauer or CCM,” Jarom said. “But they are coming, they are doing the right things to make the best quality possible and we’ve seen a demand and people are looking for True gear.”

Jarom said True’s push into the market is similar to how Warrior came into the market, but it seems more nuanced and patient.

“True, I don’t get the feeling they’ve rushed anything, they’ve taken their time, and each time they do get into a space they’ve delivered,” Jarom said. “That they’ve gotten one of the go-to brands in goalies now (Lefevre), they are poising themselves to be one of the best equipment brands in the long run.”

The Athletic’s Marc Antoine Godin contributed to this report.

(Top Photo by Jonathan Kozub/NHLI via Getty Images)

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