Flyers help young patients design SkateSkins for Hockey Fights Cancer game
Zegras, who at 24 is just a few years older than Dietl, was blown away by her fortitude.
“She was a little bit older than all the other the other kids, so I thought that was pretty cool, that she was able to put herself out there a little bit,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing. What a strong girl, all the stuff that she’s been through, and going through kind of just takes you back to the human aspect of life and whatnot. I had a blast spending time with her and getting to know her and tried to make it as fun as possible.”
The technical side of producing the SkateSkins, taking crayons and markers on a sheet of paper and converting them into high-resolution graphics, provided a challenge. SkateSkins founder and owner Matthew Keeler said because it was a Hockey Fights Cancer event, there was no roadblock that couldn’t be cleared.
“Our partnership with Hockey Fights Cancer, which we value tremendously, and working in partnership with the NHL, has been huge,” Keeler said. “They’ve given us all the support and resources that we need to succeed. And ultimately, the Flyers and the NHL really trusted our vision when it came to this and what we’re building with SkateSkins.
“For the Flyers to be the first NHL team to wear our product and being able to include local kids on the design, I think really made this collaboration pretty special.”
The goalie masks will be painted by artist Franny Drummond, whose studio, PaintZoo, is located in the Philadelphia suburb of Langhorne, Pennsylvania. He has created masks for several current and retired NHL goalies, among them Vladar, Jacob Markstrom, Brian Elliott, Steve Mason and Devan Dubnyk. He’ll have a different challenge with the mask Ersson and his co-designer, Brayden, an 11-year-old two-time cancer survivor, designed.
“We’ve got the Liberty Bell, we’ve got a hockey stick, we put our names,” Ersson said. “We got a cheesesteak. Brayden didn’t want to paint that much, so he said, ‘I’ll just write (the word cheesesteak), and then they’ll get a picture.'”
