Sean McHale grew up in British Columbia with a love for hockey and a knack for design.

On the ice, McHale always played goalie for his hockey team. However, he couldn’t afford to buy a custom mask, leading him to repaint his own, season after season.

“I’ve always painted masks, for myself and for friends. I’m really into hockey and goaltending, and I love that expression that the goalies get. No other sport has that. Everyone’s uniform, but it’s unique to hockey, and it’s stuck with the sport at all levels,” he said.

McHale credits his artistic abilities to the hours of assembling model airplanes with his dad during his younger years.

As he moved on to pursue a mechanical engineering degree and build a career in technical sales, the painting of masks was pushed aside as a hobby for McHale.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, with a bit of encouragement from his wife, that McHale decided to turn his passion into a business.

“Basically, my wife suggested, ‘You can’t just be doing this for fun, you should see where it can go.’ So, it started to take off, and earlier this year, I decided to retire from my sales job and do this full-time.”

Based out of the Philadelphia suburbs, McHale Custom specializes in custom-painted goalie masks for hockey players of all levels, ranging from youth league to college club teams, to D1 NCAA programs, to the AHL. The first school he painted for was UConn, but now, college teams all across the nation are repping a custom mask crafted by McHale. “I think I counted the other day, there’s probably close to 20 schools.”

Penn State players, in particular, have reached out to McHale to execute their creative visions, with his first Penn State clients being Arsenii Sergeev and John Seifarth, the Nittany Lions’ goalies for the 2024-2025 season.

“Arseni transferred through the transfer portal to Penn State, and then that’s how I got connected with Ben Kogut, the equipment manager for the men’s team, through Arseni.”

This season, he’s worked on masks for Penn State men’s hockey goalies Kevin Reidler and Josh Fleming, and is working with Chris McFayden on his mask for this season. He has also done a mask for Penn State women’s hockey goalie Maddy Campbell.

Kevin Reidler’s mask by McHale Custom

Maddy Campbell’s mask by McHale Custom

Josh Fleming’s mask by McHale Custom

“Josh’s mask this year, looks really cool, and I like that you can tell what that is from the stands, and Josh had a really neat idea to do a half blue and half white mask,” said McHale.

Each mask takes roughly one to two weeks to complete, according to McHale. The process begins as a collaboration, with some clients sharing a vision with McHale, and others giving him creative freedom to deliver a unique design.

“So, simply, someone will reach out to me on Instagram, or through my website, or email, or a referral. They’ll give me an idea of roughly what they want, and then I’ll give them a proposal, they’ll give me a deposit, and then we’ll start working on the design concept, and we’ll go back and forth on that,” McHale explained.

McHale then creates a digital rendering to finalize the vision. Once he receives the client’s mask, he deconstructs it and prepares the mask for painting by sanding and priming it. Once the mask is painted, he finishes it with multiple coats of automotive clear coat to protect the art from scratches and chips.

The process itself isn’t very difficult for McHale, but he certainly acknowledges that painting on a flat canvas is much easier than painting on a hockey helmet.

“The biggest challenge is that there are very few flat surfaces on a mask. There are concave and convex curves, so the hardest thing to paint on a mask is a straight line. You almost have to make it not straight to make it look straight, so that plays with your eye a little bit,” McHale said while laughing.

Ultimately, those challenges are what make the business fun for McHale, who has found a perfect balance of passion and work.

“It’s just something I really enjoy doing. I think if I were doing it 80 hours a week, it wouldn’t be as fun anymore, but as long as it’s fun, I’m excited to do it,” McHale says. “The nice thing about painting masks is that the whole cycle time is maybe a week and a half to two weeks, so you never really get burned out on one single project, and they’re all so different, and the people that you’re painting for are so unique. That keeps the enthusiasm for those couple weeks of painting, being able to help tell their story.”

A glow-in-the-dark mask, the silhouette of a city in Russia, and printing foreign languages are all concepts that McHale has helped deliver for his athlete clients. He always found satisfaction in executing these artistic visions and seeing the athletes show off his creations on the ice, but what he didn’t expect was the fulfillment of connecting with his clients.

“Obviously, the reward is getting to see my work on social media and on TV, and going to meet the goalies in person. I always loved the painting, I always loved hockey and goaltending, I loved the uniqueness of it. What I didn’t expect was the friendships and relationships that have kind of spawned from it.”

These connections are as meaningful as it gets for McHale, who stays in touch with the goalies through their season and converses about topics that go beyond the sport of hockey.

 “I still play hockey twice a week with friends, and one of the guys I skate with was a captain at UConn, and he has connections there, so he hooked me up with the equipment manager,” says McHale. “They had two goalies that season I painted for, Ethan Haider and Arseni, who was at Penn State last year, so I painted for both of them. That was Ethan’s last year of school, and then he went pro, and I’ve stayed in touch with him. He’s with Nashville and Milwaukee, and has been playing in Atlanta, so I’ve been fournaute to do a bunch of masks for him. But we’ve talked about home renovations, he got married this summer, and other parts of his life outside of hockey.

As his business continues to grow, McHale says it’d be nice to paint a mask for an NHL goalie someday, but he’ll find satisfaction in seeing the players he’s worked with make it to the pros.

“I think it’ll be rewarding to see guys I’ve worked with in college succeed and move to the next level. Arsenii is now in Calgary, and even though they have their own mask painter, it’s really cool to see him be successful, having got to know him a little, and his family.

As for younger hockey players, McHale hopes they stay committed to the sport and, above all, enjoy it. His own journey as a mechanical engineer turned craftsman proves how valuable sticking with a genuine passion can be.