'The Save'

There aren’t a lot of similarities between Adin Hill and UnlinkTiger Woods.

Hill was born in Comox, British Columbia, Canada in 1996. Woods in Cypress, California in 1975. While Hill likely golfs in the offseason, he plays hockey professionally. Woods, meanwhile, has 110 professional wins, including 82 on the PGA Tour (tied for first all time). Recently, though, Hill did something similar to Woods.

By now you’ve seen Hill's unbelievable stick save to keep Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final tied at 1. At the time of writing this post, the video has 60k+ views — and that is only on NHL's clip. There were many eyeballs on that game live, as well as across other countries’ social media channels.

While Hill's team, the Vegas Golden Knights, were obviously big beneficiaries of the save, there was another beneficiary — TRUE.

Just like Woods’ incredible pitch shot at the 2005 Masters in which the Nike logo on his ball was prominently visual until disappearing into the cup, branding was again front and center for a huge sporting moment on Hill’s miraculous save (see photo above). You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

Eventually, Nike produced a commercial using Woods’ shot, and had this to say about the outcomes:

At the time, one 30-second commercial during the final round of the Masters was priced at roughly a quarter of a million dollars. The two seconds that Nike’s logo appeared on screen before it fell back into the hole amounted to $16,666 in intellectual value each time it was shown.

Before the night was out, Nike had made the equivalent of roughly $1 million in free publicity from replays of the clip (per Bunkered.co).

Just like Woods in 2005, Hill has produced a moment for not only himself, his team and Golden Knights fans, but for TRUE. A relatively up-and-coming sports equipment company, TRUE has about a 5% Share of sticks in the NHL, so any free publicity is beneficial.

However, because sports are so emotionally driven, this is about far more than marketing and public perception. Should this save by Hill go down in hockey lore as the new “The Save” (formerly held by Braden Holtby) TRUE will be tied to that moment. Sports are all about moments, and memorable sports moments go down in history and span generations.

Almost every hockey fan can imagine in their minds the scene when someone mentions Bobby Orr’s Stanley Cup-winning goal, or Mario splitting the D, or Yzerman’s “Gretzky had it, lost it”, or even when Ray Bourque finally lifted the Cup over his head. These moments are burned into the memory of hockey fans. And with how modern-day branding works, TRUE will be a part of hockey lore when it comes to this Hill save.

Should the Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup this year, you can bet “The Save” will be replayed many times as a pivotal moment in Hill and his team achieving hockey’s greatest prize.

Furthermore, Hill will be wearing TRUE as he lifts the Cup over his head.