Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.
The skates beat the player to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
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If you were on the fence with regard to their power, or if you were unaware, that should serve as suitable proof. Sergei Fedorov — the sublimely talented trailblazer, possessor of a blend of skill, substance and star quality beyond rare and, in steakhouse terms, closer to “blue” — had to play 17 extra years and wait three more before the Hall called him back.
Those are the rules for players, and they are largely unflinching. Equipment, though? The Hall gets it when it wants it, especially from Stanley Cup champions. And in 1997, after Fedorov’s Detroit Red Wings won their first Cup since 1955, the Hall’s curators made their collective decision; they set their sights on his white Nike prototypes.
First pair of white Nike skates worn by Sergei Fedorov of the @DetroitRedWings in 1996. See them today at the HHOF. pic.twitter.com/RU5cjY5M60
— Hockey Hall of Fame (@HockeyHallFame) May 2, 2016
In the first season he wore them — the only one for that particular model, which was never widely available but Nike’s first, flashiest swing at building a hockey foothold — Fedorov led the ’97 Wings in postseason points, with 20 in 20 games, en route to winning the Stanley Cup.
There was greatness behind him; by the summer of 1997, he’d won the 1994 Hart Trophy, a pair of Selkes and put up two 100-point seasons. Wayne Gretzky, in that stretch, called him “the best player in the game,” and given the context, the label fit; Gretzky had lapped the field, but his peak had passed. Mario Lemieux was on the verge of taking a health sabbatical. Eric Lindros could’ve staked a claim, but his game wasn’t nearly as fully formed as Fedorov’s.
There was greatness ahead — Fedorov and the Wings would win the Cup again, and he’d continue to build his rep as a one-of-one talent — and drama, too. Contract disputes in Detroit opened a rift that has yet to close. Stints with Anaheim and Columbus were uneven in their best moments. By the time he landed with Alex Ovechkin’s Capitals in one of their early incarnations, Fedorov was more of a leader than a difference-maker, the better part of a decade removed from his final All-Star Game.
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If you were of a particular demographic, though — if you were a person who cared about Russian players’ spot in NHL history, or a person who came of age during the mid-’90s, or both — it was impossible to watch Fedorov, even in his winter, and not remember. Who could forget him?
“Fedorov is the one a lot of us look to,” Sergei Gonchar, a five-time All-Star defenseman, told The Athletic. He’s five years younger, one of the first players to walk through the doors Fedorov and other Russian stars began opening in the late 1980s and a Hall of Fame candidate in his own right. To Gonchar, though, Fedorov stands alone, which is why Fedorov is No. 33 on our list of the greatest NHL players of the modern era.
“(Fedorov) proved a Russian could come to the NHL and be the best player. He was the first to do it. If you’re talking about the all-time Russians, of course you have Alex and (Evgeni Malkin), but Fedorov was first to be recognized as the NHL’s best player and be a Russian, and that means a lot to many of us,” Gonchar said.
“He could do everything. He was the best forward, could run a power play, was great at penalty kill and two-way — he could even play defense; I saw him do it, and he might have been the best defenseman if he played only that position. He had so much talent you couldn’t believe it.”
Lots of players have talent, though. Fedorov had talent and swagger — and Nike knew it.
(Getty Images)Mike Rupp knew it, too. He’s an analyst for NHL Network now, eight years out from his 11-season, 610-game career and 19 from his Stanley Cup-clinching goal for the Devils.
In 1997-98, Rupp was just a first-year OHL player. The Cleveland native was coming into his own with the Erie Otters; he’d be the No. 9 pick in the NHL Draft by the summer.
He also, like plenty of his peers, had turned into a Nike hockey partisan. To blame? Guess who. In 1996-97, as a freshman at Cleveland’s St. Edward High School, Rupp had snagged a removable gold strap designed for basketball shoes and used it to turn his standard black skates into a pair of “Nikes.” He’d seen those Hall of Fame-bound prototypes, after all.
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“It was my nod,” Rupp told The Athletic. “This is my Fedorov moment, right? When I was turning at certain angles, I was probably losing an edge because (the strap) made my skates wider, but I didn’t give a s—. I was wearing ’em.”
Rupp’s arrival in Erie coincided with Nike’s first widespread “Fedorov” skate release. The Zoom Air Accel Elite came in white, but it was no prototype. We’re talking several colorways. An inline model. A design that looked a little more intentional, and a little less like someone slapped a red swoosh onto a pair of Bauers. Flash. Style points.
The Zoom Air release was the tentpole of Nike’s hockey strategy. The biggest name in sportswear, then and now, had acquired Bauer Hockey in 1995 for $395 million. Those were boom times for the sport in the United States, despite the lockout-shortened season of 1994-95. League revenues were up, thanks in part to a 600 percent increase in merchandise sales, and optimism was running high. TV ratings weren’t great — a 1.8 average on ESPN in 1993-94, according to an infamous Sports Illustrated cover story that otherwise gassed up the league to a wild degree, was low enough to qualify as “minuscule.” With the benefit of hindsight, that should’ve rang some alarm bells. It didn’t, though, and a year later, Nike had placed its own meaningful bet. The overarching goal was to take Nike from American sneaker company to a global sports behemoth. Hockey was part of the plan.
And in hockey, Fedorov led the way. “We hadn’t necessarily planned to go to Russia and make Russia a key market for Nike, but the fact that he was Russian and all the history with Canada Cups and U.S.-Russian Olympics, the thought was he’d be a great asset,” Joe McCarthy, the head of Nike’s global advertising from 1993-97, told The Sporting News in 2015.
Still, he had company. Jeremy Roenick and Mats Sundin, among others, showed up in a TV ad campaign. If you’re a hockey fan over 35 — or if you have one in your life — you’re probably familiar. The premise for some of the Fedorov-centric spots was that he’d chased goalies out of the NHL. Because of him, they were stuck mopping elevator atriums and running the register at Burgerama, raging against “Mr. Long-Haired Russian Freak Boy, skating around in his fancy Nike skates” as a young Rob McElhenney watched in silence.
Another featured Fedorov taking on a full roster by himself. Plus several extra goalies. Plus a pair of figure skaters. Plus a Zamboni.
The implication was simple enough; Fedorov was a new, stylish brand of hockey player. Nike made a new, stylish brand of skates.
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So with all that in mind, back in Erie, Rupp’s request was equal parts simple and predictable. He wanted a pair of the Fedorovs. He joked that he knew the choice would mean “five or six more fights” that season. He did not care.
Rupp viewed the design — bringing white-dominant skates to hockey for, essentially, the first time since the California Golden Seals’ ill-fated experiment in the early 1970s — as a logical progression. There was a certain mid-90s “look,” he said, that had taken hold; CCM Tacks with some added white plastic on the backside. An Easton Z-bubble stick. Maybe some color in the gloves.
“Mike Modano had a little bit of the look,” Rupp said, “but Fedorov took it to another level.”
The side-eye from one of the Otters’ trainers, though, was enough to change his mind. Rupp’s request was met with the universal sign for “I dunno about that, buddy.”
The way Rupp remembers his own reaction in 2022? “Maybe you’re right. I’ll go work on my toe drags and get back to you.” Rupp was skillsy enough to have a 32-goal OHL season and stick in the NHL for more than a decade. White skates, though? For a 6-foot-5 bruiser? Hold the phone.
“If you had the guts to wear those,” Rupp said, “you had to be a certain type of a player. I was a first-round pick. I was a player. I just wasn’t that type of player.”
Erie teammate Tim Connolly, on the other hand, “was a guy that probably could get away with wearing them because he was so, so skilled and so, so filthy,” Rupp said. He wore the Fedorovs for “about a week.”
Connolly joined Rupp on another squad: Guys who appreciated the look but, for one reason or another, couldn’t quite make it stick. If Fedorov-caliber skill was the requirement for bucking one of the most bizarre bits of conventional wisdom in a sport packed with them, it’s a miracle that Nike sold more than a few pairs.
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Rupp scratched his itch elsewhere. Once he made it to the NHL in 2003, instead of signing an endorsement deal with another brand, he wore a Nike helmet. For free.
“When you’re coming into the league, and you don’t know how long it’s gonna last or how long you’re gonna play, if you get offered five grand or 10 grand to wear a helmet — I was saying no,” Rupp said. “That’s how much I wanted to wear Nike.”
And it was largely because of one guy.
“Those white Fedorovs — just Sergei Fedorov in general — changed the cool factor in hockey,” Rupp said. “And Nike was the cool factor.”
As a concept, “the cool factor” is timeless. The application, though, can be a moving target. We know now that Nike, in some respects, didn’t hit it; the price point was obscene, even relative to other premium skates.
People who wore these skates grew up to drive Hummer H2's. pic.twitter.com/BzpD0VGlkZ
— Anthony Stewart (@StuMunrue) June 10, 2018
Beyond that, function didn’t follow form; the hard-plastic, black molding along the back, according to people who wore them, took forever to suitably break in, and by the time that happened, other parts of the boot were breaking down. Any sort of scuff on the cap, from pucks, boards or other skates, came through loud and clear.
Mix in an inevitable comedown from that mid-’90s optimism, built-in resistance from the sport itself — again, first-round picks didn’t feel qualified to wear the skates — and you’ll see how Nike Hockey’s fate was probably sealed. By training camp 1999, they’d terminated their deal with Fedorov. He wasn’t all that upset, telling reporters that the company had tried to put him in a new skate model ahead of the ’99 playoffs. That wasn’t going to work. Nike held on to its Bauer assets for nine years before selling to a private equity firm for $200 million. Neither brand, as it turns out, needed the other all that much; Nike achieved global domination without hockey, and Bauer remains one of the biggest names in the game.
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Through it all, the Air Accel Elites still occupy cultural space; posting a photo of them is a quick, easy way for social media engagement. It seems like everybody loves the “Fedorovs,” despite nearly nobody actually wearing them. Credit nostalgia. Credit design.
Most of all, credit the player. Fedorov’s legacy is singular and secure, whether or not we see another NHL star in white skates. It lives in Russian stars like Ovechkin. It lives in players who fuse substance with showmanship, like Jack Hughes or Matthew Tkachuk. It lives in fans who ache for something different.
And it lives in the world’s greatest hockey museum. Odds are, the white Nike prototypes will someday cycle out of display. Fedorov, though, is there forever.
The Athletic‘s Rob Rossi contributed to this story.
(Top photo: Tom Pidgeon / Getty Images)
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