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We asked ourselves, what can we make as quickly as possible

But when the NHL temporarily closed for business on March 12, 2020, Bourgeois and his product design buddies were faced with a profound problem, that is — what do we now?

“The night the NHL closed, our business went from super-successful to zero,” Bourgeois says. A few days later, a colleague in New York mentioned a call had gone out to the private sector to get involved in the fight against COVID-19, a refrain repeated north of the border by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. By then, Bourgeois was under quarantine at home in Montreal after a trip to the States, and already brainstorming ideas — via videoconferencing and document-sharing gizmos — with his team about what they could do to help.

Several ideas were floated, debated and, ultimately, put aside as a plan to make medical-grade face shields for frontline healthcare workers took shape. Bauer, along with all those skates, makes NHL visors. A visor stops sticks and pucks. A well-executed face shield stops viruses. Four prototypes later, each of which was tested by a doctor whose kid works as a designer for the company, and the Bauer facial protector was born.

Photo by Bauer Hockey

Bourgeois sent a detailed power point pitch to people in government thereafter saying, in effect: “This is what we can do.” Alas, nobody responded, at least not at first. So Bourgeois tipped off a reporter at RDS, the French-language sports broadcaster/website. An article was published and, voila, the orders started pouring in, a tally that has topped 700,000 units and shows no signs of slowing. (The Quebec government has ordered 300,000 face shields from Bauer).