It was 5am.
Atlantic City. A parking lot. COVID had shut everything down, which meant no locker rooms, no warm buildings, no anywhere to be except outside in the dark while the wind came off the water and cut straight through you.
I got my son into his gear out there — mite-age, brand new to the position — and carried him across the pavement. Pads and all. He couldn’t exactly walk on his own in full goalie equipment across a parking lot. So I carried him.
Every hockey parent has a version of this morning. The alarm that feels violent. The dark drive. The cold that’s waiting for you when you get there. You don’t talk about it much. You just do it. Because that’s what the sport asks of you, and you say yes every time.
But when I set him down at the edge of the ice and watched him pull that mask down for the first time — I stopped.
Because I knew that look.
I’d worn it myself. As a kid in New Jersey, I’d seen a photograph of Sean Burke in net for the Devils. The stance, the mask, the whole image — and something in me just *locked*. I didn’t want to play hockey anymore. I wanted to play *goal*. That picture did something to me I couldn’t explain then and don’t need to explain now.
Thirty-something years later, it was in my son’s eyes.
Same sport. Same position. Same feeling, passed from one generation to the next in a frozen parking lot at 5am while the Atlantic Ocean tried its best to make us go home.
We didn’t go home.
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That was about my son. What happened next was about me.
For years I’d been making things for the hockey community — airbrushing goalie masks, designing third jerseys for my son’s travel teams, building the whole identity for my beer league squad. Logo. Jerseys. Hoodies. Tees. When the guys put it on for the first time, something happened in that locker room. You could feel it. Gear that actually looked like *them* changed the energy in the room.
I’d been doing that for everyone else.
I looked at everything I’d been making and everything I knew, and the question became unavoidable: *why am I not building something for myself?*
I’m a Level 4 USA Hockey certified coach. I’ve coached youth hockey for years. I still play adult league. My team, Clockwork Orange Hockey Club, has won three championships in the past few seasons. I’ve done branding and merchandise for the NHL, the NFL, Universal Music, and Harley-Davidson. I grew up skating and surfing on the Jersey Shore, shaping and airbrushing boards, studying the work of designers who broke every rule on purpose. I know what this sport looks like from the inside, and I know what it should look like on the outside.
The Blade Union is what you get when you stop making things for everyone else and finally bet on yourself.
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The airbrushing started with surfboards.
Growing up on the Jersey Shore I shaped boards and Airbrushed them. Years later I gave it a try with my son’s mask as a Christmas present. That first mask led to more. The design instinct that had been running through skate graphics and surf culture found a home in hockey in the geometry of a mask, the colorways of a jersey, the identity of a team.
That’s the thread. Skate to surf to mask to jersey to brand. It didn’t happen in a straight line but it all connects.
The career that ran alongside it, Art Director at Harley-Davidson, branding and merch for the NHL and NFL gave me the tools to do this properly. Not just make something that looks good, but build something that holds together as an identity. A brand, not just a logo on a hoodie.
Last summer I built a shooting platform and half boards in my backyard so my son could work on his game whenever he wanted. I’m still in it. Still making things. Still at the rink.
That’s not going to change.
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This brand is for the next generation of hockey players. For the grinders and the tendies and the beauties and the rink rats. For the kids who live and breathe this sport and for the parents who carry them across parking lots in the dark so they can.
