This past NFL season, fans got a glimpse of a ton of incredible pairs of custom cleats that players wore during warmups and sometimes games, whether the league liked it or not.
Odell Beckham Jr. and Antonio Brown are the two "pioneers" of the custom cleat movement in our humble opinion as they pushed the envelope with their ideas and more players caught on.
Football is the only sport we've really seen custom footwear in, but on Russian Heritage Night in Washington on March 23rd, custom footwear comes to the NHL thanks to Alexander Ovechkin.
The men responsible for Ovi's custom skates are the same guys behind the NFL's custom cleat revolution, Nicholas "theheyymann" Avery and Napoleon "Polo" Kerber.
As per ESPN, Ovi's representatives contacted the duo about having custom cleats made, to which they obliged.
Avery explained the challenges of painting skates compared to cleats to ESPN's Paul Lukas:
"Painting on hard plastic is very different, so I had to change up a few techniques," he said. "The fabric on sneakers and football cleats has some give, so I usually use razor blades to do fine details and fine lines. But I wasn't able to do that here, so I had to do a lot of brush work, and I also used a lot of hand-cut stencils."
The skate features Ovechkin's native country of Russia and adopted country, the United States.
The two buildings one skates are Saint Basel's Cathedral and the United States Capitol. Avery said it took him about 30 hours to complete the project, making it the longest custom job of his career.
The skates are absolutely magnificent and they suit how Ovechkin is as a player and person. More importantly, though, they're going to be only worn in warmups and auctioned off with the proceeds going to the American Special Hockey Association.
(H/T: ESPN)
