Tough guy forward Donald Brashear won a lot of fights during his 17-season National Hockey League career.
Wednesday night, Brashear struck another victorious blow – landing a $500,000 deal for his fledgling Brash87 low-cost hockey stick company with the denizens of CBC’s popular “Dragons’ Den,” Canada’s version of CNBC’s “Shark Tank.”
The former NHL enforcer who let his fists do the talking to the tune of 2,634 career penalty minutes persuaded three Dragons – Jim Treliving, Michael Wekerle, and ManjitMinhas – to do a deal in which they provide $500,000 to help him boost the inventory of his China-manufactured sticks in return for a 40 percent economic interest and 50 percent voting interest in Brash87.
“I’m still working on them trying to close that deal,” Brashear told me Wednesday night. “Bottom line, if you’re starting a business and you have people that know the most and have a lot of money and want to invest in your company, it’s a good sign. I hope it gives a push, marketing-wise.”
Treliving, chairman and owner of Boston Pizza International, Inc., has hockey connections. He’s director of the Hockey Canada Foundation. His son, Brad Treliving, is general manager of the NHL’s Calgary Flames.
Brashear went on the show in search of funding and partners for the company he founded after he was appalled by the prospect of paying $300 for a twig after he retired from the NHL six years ago.
Ex-NHL enforcer Donald Brashear, left, with partner Jibin Joseph show off Brash87 hockey sticks to the cast of CBC’s “Dragons’ Den.”
He was a kept man hockey equipment-wise during his career with the Vancouver Canucks, Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals, and New York Rangers and never realized how much money hockey parents and beer league players shelled out for sticks.
So he started Brash87, which sells Brashear-designed, professional-caliber, carbon fiber sticks at a price that won’t send hockey parents and recreational adult players into sticker shock.
The sticks range between $129 (CAN) and $179 (CAN), roughly between $94 and $130 in U.S. currency. Brashear says his mostly mail order business is booming, perhaps faster than he anticipated.
Donald Brashear, left, played for five NHL teams, including the Philadelphia Flyers (Photo/Bruce Bennett/Getty Images via Philadelphia Flyers).
“At first when I started, I was going so fast that I didn’t have enough inventory,” he told me. “With more inventory, I can get more sticks at a lower price, which will be even better for me. The problem was getting investment cash to get the larger inventory.”
He currently has an inventory of 3,000 sticks. He envisions growing that to 10,000 to 20,000 sticks so he can begin selling them in big stores. After surviving the “Dragons’ Den,” he may get his wish.
After 17 National Hockey League seasons playing for five teams that provided him with every piece of equipment he needed, tough guy forward Donald Brashear had an epiphany – and a case of sticker shock – when he had to buy a hockey stick.
“I was retired for five years, so when I ran out of sticks and I went to buy one at a store, I thought the sticks were so expensive,” Brashear told me recently. “Even though I have money, it didn’t make sense for me to pay 300 bucks for a stick just to play in the beer league.”
Donald Brashear launched a quest to make an affordable hockey stick.
That breath-gasping experience launched Brashear on a mission to manufacture and sell professional-caliber, carbon fiber, high-performance hockey sticks at an affordable price.
The result was Brash 87, an upstart business that sells Brashear-designed sticks for players of all levels. He’s priced them between $129 (CAN) and $189 (CAN) – roughly $103 to $151 (USD) – about half the cost of name-brand sticks.
Brashear is the latest individual or company to venture into the lucrative and ultra-competitive hockey stick business. In 2013, STX, a Baltimore-based lacrosse, field hockey, and golf equipment maker branched off into ice hockey sticks.
In 2000, golf club shaft-maker True got into the hockey stick biz and has sold more than two million twigs since. But big-name hockey companies continue to be the big dogs. Bauer, for example, has an estimated 54 percent of the hockey equipment market – which includes sticks.
Brashear says he’s not out to conquer the hockey stick-making world. He just wants a small piece of the planet.
“It’s like you’re drinking Pepsi-Cola and then there’s a new company that shows up and says ‘Listen, I want to take one percent of that market,'” he told me. “If I can get one percent of what that company is making, that’s a lot of money.”
Donald Brashear played for five NHL teams, including the Philadelphia Flyers (Photo/ Mitchell Layton/Getty Images via Philadelphia Flyers)
Brashear began his quest slowly. First, he searched for a reliable manufacturer in China who could make sticks to his specifications. After personally putting prototype sticks through their paces, he began selling the sticks around hometown Quebec City and at a Toronto-area Canadian Tire store.
“In six months, eight months, I sold like close to 3,000 sticks with no marketing, no advertising, no nothing. Only word of mouth,” he told me. “I hit two markets: the parents who don’t want to pay for a stick that’s too expensive and the beer league player who wants a high-performance stick.”
He’s become a traveling salesman of sorts, lugging a few Brash 87’s with him to rinks around Quebec City where he plays hockey five times a week.
“I bring my sticks, other players take them and they realize ‘That’s a nice stick, it’s light,'” Brashear said. “I say ‘Why don’t you try it?’ They try it and they adopt it.”
Now Brashear is looking to expand. He pitched his wares earlier this month before the panelists of CBC’s “Dragons’ Den,” Canada’s equivalent to CNBC’s popular “Shark Tank” business reality television show. The episode should air in the upcoming season.
Donald Brashear recently pitched his less-expensive Brash 87 hockey sticks to CBC’s “Dragons’ Den,” Canada’s version of CNBC’s “Shark Tank.” (Photo/CBC)
“The ultimate goal is to build a high-performance stick to help people save money on sticks,” he said. “It’s not something I’m doing to become a millionaire. It’s something I’m doing where I’m helping people and helping me at the same time.”
Some fans might think Brashear’s desire to sell hockey sticks a bit odd. After all, he was a player known more for his fists than his scoring touch. In 1,025 NHL games, Brashear tallied 85 goals, 120 assists and a whopping 2,634 penalty minutes – most of them accumulated five minutes at a time as one of the league’s fiercest and most-feared fighters.
The website dropyourgloves.com calculates that Brashear had 390 fights during his hockey career – 277 of them while playing for the Montreal Canadiens, VancouverCanucks, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals, and New York Rangers. He spent enough time in the sin bin that he’s ranked 15th all-time in penalty minutes among NHL players.
“A lot of people know me as a guy that was fighting but knew how to play the game, that could score a goal once in a while, and could make some passes,” said Brashear, an Indiana-born French-Canadian. “If you look at my stats, I fight but I was also picking up points.”
Brashear had the ability to light the lamp. He was second in scoring on the Fredericton Canadiens -Montreal’s American Hockey League farm team in 1993-94 – with 38 goals and 28 assists while amassing 250 penalty minutes. He had an NHL career-high 28 points – 9 goals, 19 assists – for the Canucks in 2000-2001.
One of his most satisfying seasons was when he scored 25 points – 8 goals, 17 assists – with the Flyers in 2002-03 as a fourth-line player with right wing Sami Kapanen and center Keith Primeau.
“That was a fun year, I really liked it,” Brashear told me. “I always wanted to be in different situations, and I was used in different situations. I wanted to become a better player.”
He added: “I shot a lot of pucks and I know a lot about hockey sticks. I would watch (Capitals forward Alex) Ovechkin make a move and I would try to make the same one. It would take me two years before I would be able to, but in the end I would get it.”
But toughness remains Brashear’s calling card. When his young players were being pushed around in the Swedish Hockey League last season, Modo Assistant General Manager Peter Forsberg telephoned his then 42-year-old former Flyers teammate Brashear and asked him to hop a plane and suit up.
“I said ‘Peter, I’ve been retired for five years. Yeah, I play a lot of hockey, but I’m not in game shape like going 100 miles an hour like these kids now in Europe,'” Brashear recalled. “I said ‘We’re not allowed to fight.’ He said ‘No, but your presence there is going to make a big difference.'”
Brashear’s Modo stat line: 12 regular season games, no points and six penalty minutes. He had a goal, no assists, and two penalty minutes in four playoff games. He was a fan favorite during his nearly three-month stint in Sweden.
“I really enjoyed it…I kind of wish right after my career I had the chance to go play there to get better at the game there,” he said. “There’s so much skating, passing the puck. It’s not so much physical.”
Mike Grier already has his strategy down for coaching a squad of some of the best 2015 NHL draft-eligible players born in the United States: just open the bench door and point them to the ice.
“You’ve got all the best players around so you won’t have to do too much,” Grier told me. “I’ll keep everyone involved and keep the lines flowing.”
Grier will test his coaching philosophy on September 25 when he serves as a bench boss at the CCM/USA Hockey All-American Prospects Game at the First Niagara Center in Buffalo, home of the Buffalo Sabres.
“It’s definitely an honor to be involved in this event,” Grier said. “It’s a big deal for USA Hockey and you’ll have a lot of NHL teams watching.”
Rugged forward Mike Grier had two stints with the Buffalo Sabres during his 15-year NHL career (Photo/Bill Wippert)
Forty-two players who’ll be eligible for the 2015 NHL Draft will compete on teams coached by Grier – who played 15 seasons for the Sabres, Edmonton Oilers, Washington Capitals, and San Jose Sharks – and Eddie Olczyk, the lead hockey analyst for the NHL on NBC and NBC Sports Network.
Olczyk played 16 seasons for the Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets, Los Angeles Kings, and PittsburghPenguins. He helped guide the Rangers to its Stanley Cup victory in 1994 and is a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
A Detroit native and Boston University hockey standout, Grier was the NHL’s fourth U.S.-born black player. He followed Indiana-born forward Donald Brashear, Maine’s Mike McHugh, and Ocala, Florida’s Valmore James who became the NHL’s first African-American player when he debuted with Sabres in the 1981-82 season.
James and Brashear were tough guys, on-ice enforcers known more for their fists than their scoring touch. Grier combined toughness with scoring. He was the NHL’s first African-American player to score more than 20 goals in a season. He finished his career with 162 goals, 383 total points and 510 penalty minutes in 1,060 games.
Grier played for Team USA at the 1995 International Ice Hockey Federation WorldJunior Championship and won a bronze medal skating for the U.S. at the 2004 IIHF Men’s World Championship.
“It’s really something that I’m proud of, being one of the first to break through,” Grier said. “The (minority) players who are coming up now are skill players who are contributing to their teams. It’s only natural to get more kids of color in the game.”
These days, Grier is involved in coaching youth hockey coaching and he served as an on-ice instructor last month at USA Hockey’s Boys’ Select 17 Player Development Camp.
“I’m just seeing what comes,” Grier said. “I like working with kids on the player development side of it and giving back to the kids.”