BladeTape inventor eyes big leagues after lucky NHL product placement

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Every Vancouver Canucks hockey fan had sweaty palms Tuesday night when, in the dying moments of the Vancouver-Dallas playoff game, Vancouver defenceman Willie Mitchell swept the puck from his team's goal line, preserving a Canucks win.

Richard Findlay had reason to be more grateful than your average fan. In multiple replays from the camera tucked inside the net on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, viewers saw repeated closeups of the product Findlay invented and Mitchell uses on his stick: BladeTape. Mitchell's dramatic product placement came just two nights after HNIC broadcasters Ron MacLean and Kelly Hrudey gave a between-periods demonstration of BladeTape for the CBC viewing audience.

"The phone is so busy I can't get out of the office," says Findlay, a landscape architect and recreational league hockey player, from his Kitsilano home office. Right on cue, the phone rang in the background.

BladeTape consists of two cross-hatched rubberized plastic strips that a player applies to either side of a hockey stick blade.

It is applied like a bumper sticker -- you peel away the paper backing and lay it over the blade, preferably at room temperature. Unlike conventional hockey tape, BladeTape does not cover the bottom of the stick, which lengthens the life of the product (on average, 15 games) and leads to less buildup of snow and ice.

It provides shock absorption, less drag on the ice and a better grip on the puck, the latter a problem with the new one-piece sticks made of composite-materials.

It retails for $9.99 a pair and can be found at Canadian Tire outlets, among other stores.

Findlay first came up with the idea a decade ago, and experimented with wrapping a bicycle inner tube, condom style, over his stick. The one-piece composite sticks weren't prominent then, so Findlay shelved the idea for nine years.

Then, in a rec-league game last spring, Findlay made a perfect breakaway pass to a teammate, but the puck bounced off his one-piece stick. Findlay went home, pulled out his old files and, with the encouragement of his wife, pursued the idea of making a product that would make these sticks less lively. Several prototypes later, he had BladeTape, but when he went to his patent agent he found out a Pennsylvania man had patented the same thing.

He contacted the American, a millionaire thermoplastics engineer who made surgical implants, who offered to sell him the patent and the business. By the end of July, Findlay had flown all the equipment north, and set up a manufacturing shop at the White Rock garage of Ted Ferguson, one of three business partners in the venture.

One of those partners is Anaheim Ducks general manager Brian Burke, whom Findlay bumped into in Vancouver. After a second meeting, Burke took a 10-per-cent interest in BladeTape, and worked on getting the National Hockey League to endorse the product.

In BladeTape's corporate structure, Findlay, 44, owns 68 per cent, production manager Ferguson and Toronto resident Scott McBride, an old high school friend of Findlay's, each have 11 per cent, and Burke has 10 per cent.

As a marketing ploy, Findlay went to local ice rinks and handed the product out to kids. Later, when he approached stores, he found out the kids had asked them to stock the product.

In its first six months of business, BladeTape has done more than $100,000 in sales. The plug on Hockey Night in Canada will surely cause that figure to rise.

In the NHL, Mitchell and Detroit Red Wings defenceman Danny Markov use BladeTape. Canucks forward Matt Cooke used it for about 15 games before changing his stick.

"With the pros, their hands are so good they don't need this product," says Findlay, who obviously hadn't seen many Philadelphia Flyers games. "They don't get the snow and ice buildup, because they get a [Zamboni] flood every 20 minutes.

"But for the recreational player, it gives you the feeling of hands without having good hands."

Findlay, who wants to devote his time to his landscaping business, harbours hope that one of the three big sporting goods companies -- Nike, Reebok or Easton -- will come to his aid.

"I'll ride out the storm, and see if next year at this time we've made some serious inroads," says Findlay.

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