Air Jordan on ice? Meet the trio hoping to change what NHL skates can look like

June 01, 2024

Matthew Keeler and Nick Ciavarella are hopeful that someday they’ll produce an NHL equivalent of the signature sneaker. Until then, the pair of Buffalo natives are doing their best to help create their own through their company Just Dishin.

“Hockey is a really traditional sport and lagging behind where guys can really express themselves,” Keeler said. “We just wanted to think outside the box of what hockey is and what hockey can be.”

So they stole a page from the NBA, and one of the most iconic shoes of all time, the 1985 Air Jordan I.

Working with artist Dakota Wiley, Keeler and Ciavarella worked to create a skate equivalent of the red-and-black sneaker. Wiley, who has built custom cleats for more than 80 NFL players, built the skate with custom red leather on top of a CCM boot.

The trio posted images of the skate on social media earlier this month and it has been shared and reshared thousands of times.

“We knew it was gonna make noise, we knew when we were working on a project like this people would see something iconic and how we brought it to hockey,” Ciavarella said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind thing for a reason.”

It’s the second skate Wiley has crafted. He also made a custom Jordan-based Dior skate for Just Dishin that he finished in January 2020.

“I had done some cleat work with them before, and they asked me if there was any way I thought I could turn a skate into a Jordan,” Wiley said. “I said no, initially. But then I found a way for it to work, and the skates turned out pretty good.”

Wiley does all of the work in his basement in New York, where he first started his business three years ago by painting cleats for a custom look. Wiley said there are some key differences between customizing skates and cleats, particularly in the size of the boot, but overall it was about moving his art to another canvas.

The Dior skates were a hit and caught the eye of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews, so Keeler and Ciavarella sent them to Matthews this summer at his home in Arizona.

“This was a skate we knew Auston had to have, he said the same thing,” Ciavarella said. “So we had it for one day before we sent it off to him.”

The red-and-black skates are still in Keeler and Ciavarella’s possession in their office just outside of Buffalo. The Jordan skates are content for the company; they want to make it clear they aren’t selling a Nike look-a-like product commercially. Its creation and ensuing social media buzz have helped raise visibility for their company.

Keeler and Ciavarella are selling SkateSkins under the Just Dishin umbrella, which is a project that comes from a similar mindset but at a consumer-facing pricepoint.

SkateSkins is a customizable skin for skates that Keeler designs for clients. Each SkateSkin wraps around the boot of a skate and is easily replaceable. They’ve marketed the product on social media, and the typical turnaround is three weeks from order to shipment for clients.

Right now the typical client is on the amateur level, but the product has led to further discussions with skate manufacturers and Keeler and Ciavarella also sent some customized skins to Matthews during the NHL playoffs, which got a positive review from the Maple Leafs forward.

“The thing about SkateSkins is that you can customize any skate, we’ve got the templates for all of them — CCM, Bauer, True,” Keeler said. “It’s something that’s really gotten a good review since we’ve been sending them out.”

Ciavarella said the product had some initial blowback on social media — “we had some chirps on TikTok” — but as people have been able to see the product in person and it’s gotten more visibility, criticism has been muted.

All of this has been done with the backdrop of a pandemic, and Keeler lost his other job in March 2020. With an opportunity to test the product, Keeler has put skates with SkateSkins in bathtubs and freezers to see how the product will react. But reach has been limited since the hockey world has primarily been on hold for almost 11 months now.

“We’re lucky we’ve got a good connection at a local rink so we’ve been able to get out and take photos and make videos of the product in action,” Ciavarella said. “I think once we get to a spot where more people are playing hockey, and the product can be seen out in public at rinks and stuff more, that will be the next step for us.”

In the long run, Keeler and Ciavarella hope they are part of a cultural shift in the sport, where the concept of a signature skate isn’t just a social media project.

Wiley said he’d be thrilled to work with NHL players on custom skates in a similar fashion to his weekly work with the NFL.

“I’m typically spending about 12 hours per shoe on the cleats, and it’s pretty packed each week during the NFL season because guys need these by Sunday,” Wiley said. “It’s a busy week, but I’d love to do some more with hockey skates. If guys were interested in something for an NHL game, I’m ready.”

The NHL reverse retro program is a one-year project, one that was highlighted in the NHL outdoor games in Lake Tahoe, but some NHL team executives are hopeful the alternative jersey program gets extended into the 2021-22 season.

Citing a lack of fans in the building, multiple team executives told The Athletic it’s difficult to have real success with the reverse retro program in 2021. Even with strong jersey sales online, many teams have sold out their initial stock. A lack of in-person opportunities to sell jerseys makes the program feel like a half measure, according to one NHL executive.

“We have this great program and great jersey, we want to sell more of it, but it’s never going to be able to be seen in person by the fans at a game, how does that make sense?” they said. “I hope the league reconsiders and allows us to use the reverse retros into next season.”

Another team executive said jersey sales in person often outnumber the online sales, and their particular team would have ordered a larger stock to sell if they had any chance of hosting a building full of fans during the 2020-21 season.

“There is a real impact on that and fan purchasing approaches, especially if a team is winning,” they said. “It’s like food and beverage sales, someone going to a game is more interested in buying a jersey or even having a reason to have one, so why would we do this new uniform initiative and not have the chance for fans to see them in person in most places?”

An NHL spokesperson confirmed to The Athletic that the reverse retros are still only planned for use during this season.

The top-selling reverse retro jerseys across the Fanatics network of sites, which includes NHLshop.com, have been the New York Rangers reverse retro, particularly Artemi Panarin’s jersey.

After that, the Anaheim Ducks and Washington Capitals reverse retros, both the authentic Adidas jersey and the Fanatics Breakaway jersey, have filled out the list of top-selling items, according to Fanatics.

(All photos courtesy of Matthew Keeler and Nick Ciavarella)

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