When Tristan Jarry strapped on his new set of Edmonton Oilers pads before his first morning skate with the team on Saturday, the ink on Kay Whitmore’s signature had barely dried.
Whitmore, a former goalie who played nine seasons in the NHL, now works for the league office in Toronto, and one of his duties is inspecting all new goalie equipment to ensure it meets the NHL’s strict criteria. Every pad used in an NHL game includes Whitmore’s signature as proof of the inspection.
It’s only one step in the process of re-dressing a goalie when he is traded midseason. The rush to get Jarry into Edmonton-colored gear was particularly break-neck because he made his Oilers debut Saturday night in Toronto, less than 33 hours after the trade was official.
It’s a timeline that would normally be impossible to pull off, but Vaughn, the gear company, managed to do it with a combination of intuition, preparation, a late-night drive through Ontario and a little bit of luck.
The result was Jarry looking sharp for his prime-time “Hockey Night in Canada” Oilers debut. He stopped 25 shots and earned the victory as Edmonton topped the Maple Leafs 6-3, and he looked the part in his brand-new navy and orange pads.
The process began on Dec. 7 at Vaughn’s United States factory in Oxford, Mich., six days before the trade happened. Scott Hughes, Jarry’s pro service representative, was sitting down with the pad manufacturer’s founder and owner, Mike Vaughn, discussing different topics surrounding the company when Hughes mentioned he had seen rumors swirling online that Jarry could be traded.
Hughes hadn’t had any recent conversations with Jarry — or the equipment managers for either team, for that matter. He had only seen the same reports online that many fans were digesting.
He mentioned the situation to Mike Vaughn, who decided they should prepare a set of Oilers pads for Jarry, just in case. The company’s Canadian factory, located in London, Ont., shuts down from Dec. 19 to Jan. 5 for a holiday break for its employees.
“The concern was that if something were to go down, we wouldn’t be able to react to it,” Hughes explained. “So that is really why we were trying to be prepared.”
In the worst-case scenario, if the trade never happened, the company would have an extra set of Oilers-colored pads that would serve as a demo pair. Hughes reached out to members of the Vaughn graphics team to mock up two different color combinations for Jarry’s current pads, which are Vaughn’s Velocity VX1 Pro Carbon series. They created one mock-up that was navy with orange details and orange lettering, and another with white lettering. Ultimately, they chose the first option and began constructing a new set of equipment.
That included a pair of pads, two game-ready gloves, a practice glove, two blockers and two pairs of pants. Even in the most rushed of circumstances, Hughes said it takes about two days to prepare all that gear.
“Making all of that gear in one day would be impossible for us,” he explained. “It just wouldn’t happen. You have to get it set up in the computer to get cut, then layer out the material, cut it, pack it, sew it, lace it and stuff it. It’s a pretty long process.”
By Thursday, the crew in London, led by production manager Steve Fowler, had everything but the leg pads finished. On Friday morning, Hughes was driving to the office when the production staff in Canada informed him the gear would be finished later that day, and asked him how to proceed from there. The initial plan was to hold it until Monday, then ship it to Whitmore’s office for inspection.
Tristan Jarry’s full set of Oilers pads. (Courtesy of Vaughn on Instagram)
Hours later, the Penguins completed a trade to send Jarry and forward Samuel Poulin to Edmonton for Stuart Skinner, defenseman Brett Kulak and a second-round draft pick in 2029.
Hughes was in Mike Vaughn’s office when he received a call from Edmonton Oilers equipment manager Jeff Lang.
“How fast can we get some gear going?’ Lang asked.
“It’s done,” Hughes said.
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s done. We took a shot.”
Vaughn’s gamble paid off.
“We didn’t know,” Hughes said. “We were just reading the social media blowing up like everyone else, and you’re trying to prepare for things because of the holiday shutdown. To be honest, a lot of this was pure luck.”
Even with the foresight, though, the timeline would still be tight to get the gear to Jarry in time for his first game with Edmonton the following night.
“First, I sent pictures of the gear to Jarry,” Hughes recalled. “He calls and says, ‘That’s perfect. That’s what I would’ve done.’”
Friday night, Connor Ryckman, Vaughn’s equipment rep who works out of the London factory, loaded the equipment into his car and drove it two and a half hours northeast to the Oilers’ team hotel in downtown Toronto. Lang received it there and brought it with the team to Scotiabank Arena for the Oilers’ skate the following morning.
Whitmore agreed to show up at the arena early to perform the equipment inspection and approval in the building. Shortly after he applied his signature, Jarry was on the ice stopping pucks with the pads.
Tristan Jarry in the starter’s net for Edmonton pic.twitter.com/lOX98ucCfx
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) December 13, 2025
Long gone are the days of goalies needing days, or even weeks, to break in gear to the point where they’re comfortable enough to wear it in a game. There are still some veterans who prefer an abbreviated breaking-in process, but many like the gear straight out of the box.
“For the most part, they’re using fairly new equipment most of the time,” Hughes explained. “I still talk to guys like Ozzy (Chris Osgood) or Manny Legace, and a lot of these older guys hated breaking in new equipment. They would wear it until they couldn’t wear it anymore. The newer generation has been brought up on stiffer equipment.”
After a short morning skate, Jarry was ready for the game. Many noticed an obvious omission in Jarry’s new Oilers gear that night, as he was still wearing his old mask with the Penguins logo airbrushed prominently on top. Vaughn actually prepared for that as well, but the plans were undone by an unexpected hangup in customs.
Earlier in the week, when the company began preparing the equipment, Hughes reached out to Vaughn’s mask manufacturer, Dom Malerba at Pro’s Choice Goalie Masks, to prepare several masks as well. The masks worn by NHL goalies aren’t off the shelf. They are custom molded, using plaster molds of each of their heads. Malerba keeps the casts to use for any new masks. He sent two new helmets to Jarry’s custom airbrush painter, Jason Bartziokas, and eventually shipped a third plain white mask from his headquarters in Boston to Toronto, but the mask didn’t make it through international customs in time for Saturday night’s game.
That mask will eventually make it to Toronto, but the Oilers have already moved on to the next stop on their road trip. Malerba has since made a fourth custom mask for Jarry, which has been shipped to Pittsburgh, where Edmonton plays on Tuesday.
Donning the old mask and new pads, Jarry had a strong debut Saturday night in Toronto. He made several key saves when the game was close early, allowing his new team to stretch its legs and pull away late. It was an emotional night for the goaltender, who has strong ties to the city of Edmonton. He established roots there while playing junior hockey with the Oil Kings and still spent his summers there even prior to the deal.
To come out victorious in his debut, and to do it while looking like an Oiler, meant a lot to him.
“It’s special,” Jarry told Sportsnet after the game. “Obviously, you never think of these circumstances. It’s something I’ll always remember.”
On wearing new equipment, Jarry said, “Honestly, it’s pretty easy. All of the technology that they have now, it’s like the same gear I was wearing before. So there’s not much change, and it’s easy to transition.”
It took a bit of good fortune. If the game had been played anywhere but Toronto, Jarry would’ve played in his old black and gold Penguins pads. But luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and the team at Vaughn was obviously thrilled with the spotlight on their equipment. It’s the type of publicity they hope for when outfitting NHL goaltenders.
“You kind of dream of this, but don’t think something like this would ever happen,” Hughes said. “At the end of the day, everything aligned.”