One simple tweet Thursday evening rippled through the snowsports industry, creating a tsunami of speculation about the future of some of skiing’s most iconic brands.

I am looking to buy some powder skis for the upcoming season, what's your favorite 115-122 under foot? #winteriscoming — Seth Morrison (@sethmorrison1) September 15, 2016

A toss-away note, for sure. Except this one came from Crested Butte skiing legend Seth Morrison.

Morrison, one of the most influential skiers in the history of the sport, is looking for skis. After 22 years with K2 — a span that saw Morrison’s signature pro model skis help redefine the sport, with playful, surfy designs enabling a new approach to big-mountain shredding — Morrison is no longer listed among K2’s worldwide stable of 30 big-gun athletes. And Morrison cut K2 from the list of sponsors on his website. For those not acquainted with freeskiing’s biggest names, this is the equivalent of waking up one morning and seeing a LinkedIn post from Tom Brady looking for a new quarterback job.

At 42, Morrison still rips — evidenced by his prodigious annual supply of terrifying POV videos from France in recent years. The K2 breakup seems to move beyond the typical shuffling of athletes.

On the heels of a huge merger involving K2’s parent and a corporate giant, Morrison’s departure could signal sweeping changes ahead for some of skiing’s most venerable brands: K2, Volkl, Line, Full Tilt, Marmot and Marker.

K2’s owner Jarden — a 1993 spin-off of Colorado’s own Ball Corp. — was acquired in April by Newell Rubbermaid in a $15 billion deal. Jarden, which started as Ball’s canning wing under the name Alltrista Corp., spent 2002 through 2015 buying lots of companies, including Foodsaver, Leslie-Locke, U.S. Playing Card Co., Coleman Co., Sunbeam, Mr. Coffee, Oster, Crock-Pot and other household brands. In 2007, the company bought K2 Sports and its Marker, Marmot, Rawlings, Sevylor and Volkl brands.

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Before the merger, Newell reported nearly $6 billion in sales. After, the company was expecting $16 billion in annual revenue, but not before reshuffling, selling off some brands and an “attack on the 15 percent of the portfolio that is on the bottom of the ladder,” Newell Brands CEO Michael Polk told the Wall Street Journal in April.

Last week, at the Barclay’s Consumer Staples Conference in Atlanta, Polk said Newell would be jettisoning product lines worth $250 million to $300 million in sales by the end of the year.

Polk did not identify which companies he would prune.

“Ideally I would like to sell these assets versus simply walk away from them,” Polk told investors at the conference last week in a presentation. “Some of them are the kinds of businesses that would be difficult to sell and therefore, we should just shut down because they create no value for you and they are a distraction for us. We are going to focus our energy against the big opportunities and we are going to minimize the distractions. We’re going to follow the money with respect to the choices we make and the actions we take.”

Polk said he would “rapidly exit” the companies that are not sellable, promising a new corporate model for Newell Brands by Jan. 1.

K2 was forged by brothers Bill and Don Kirschner on Washington’s Vashon Island in 1962. The company has moved through several ownership structures over the years and its production facility moved to China from Washington in 2001. But its identity has always been anchored by some of the best skiers in history: from Olympic racers Spider Sabich and Phil and Steve Maher, to big-mountain pioneers like Morrison, Pep Fujas and Sean Pettit.

The ski industry has been buzzing on K2 in recent months as the company endured the Jarden-Newell merger process. A large exodus of longtime staffers started last year when K2 president Tim Petrick left the company to work as chief operating officer of southern Colorado’s Silverton Mountain ski area, a gig that moved him from a plush Seattle corner office to one of the country’s most rugged, frill-free ski areas.

For years, the heavyweights of the ski world — like K2, Rossignol, Dynastar, Salomon, Nordica, Volkl — have dismissed the growing threat from hundreds of disruptive boutique ski makers forging high-quality rides in garages, even though, in some cases, those upstart ski companies evolve into internationally established brands like Icelantic, 4FRNT, Armada and Line. But could it be that the greatest threat to the most venerable brands in skiing was coming from the other direction? Not from the kids in the garage, but from Wall Street’s quarterly expectations?

The next few months will see whether the archetypal brands of skiing have a place in today’s shareholder-driven corporate world.