Tampa Bay Lightning goaltenders Andrei Vasilevskiy and Brian Elliott share the same airbrush artist, Sylvie Marsolais. She works alongside her partner, Alexandre Mathys, who handles marketing and assists with the ideation and creation of the masks. Together, they make up the company Sylabrush, stationed in Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, Quebec, an off-island suburb of Montreal.
Naturally, they are both goaltenders. The couple first met on the ice while squaring off in a men’s league hockey game and they still face each other on a weekly basis.
Sylabrush works with clients across the hockey world, including multiple goaltenders playing in both the National Hockey League and American Hockey League.
Outside of Vasilevskiy and Elliott, other clients include Jake Allen, Sam Montembeault, Joonas Korpisalo, Craig Anderson, Anton Khudobin, Louis Domingue, Zach Fucale and Jean-Francois Berube.
After earning an art degree in college, Marsolais began airbrush painting in 1999, mostly working on projects for friends without knowing a career in airbrush art would come from her work.
“When I first started, I was painting anything that was possible to paint,” Marsolais said. “We started with motorcycles. We watched some TV shows about motorcycles getting painted and modified. There was a lot of demand for that.
“So, we did some motorcycles. We did some wall murals. We did some motorcycle helmets.
“Then, the goalie helmets started. Anything you could paint, we were trying to do it.”
Then came Berube, Sylabrush’s first client that would go on to play in the NHL, who was playing in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League for the Montreal Juniors at the time. Not long after, Sylabrush earned the business of Khudobin, who was playing for the Carolina Hurricanes and was the first active NHL client.
Shortly after, Marsolais met a teenage Vasilevskiy, who was training in Stittsville, Ontario during the summer.
“I was 15 or 16 years old, maybe 17,” said Vasilevskiy. “I met her somewhere in Canada and she just offered, ‘If you ever need your mask painted, just call me or text me.’
“Obviously, when I came over here during my first year in 2014, I didn’t have anybody here, any artists. But I still had her number, so I just texted her and, since then, she’s been my artist.”
Drafted by the Lightning with the 19th overall pick in the 2012 NHL Draft, Vasilevskiy first wore a Sylabrush mask during his final year in the KHL while playing with Salavet Yulaev Ufa. The chin of his mask featured his nickname, “Vasya,” which was changed to “Vasy” upon his arrival in North America.
On the forehead of Vasilevskiy’s masks, Lightning fans have become familiar with a lion. But at first, the mask actually featured a tiger.
“I just told her I wanted a lion on there instead of a tiger, probably because of The Lion King,” Vasilevskiy joked with a laugh. “I just thought it suited me more and, since then, it’s been on my forehead.”
It was Marsolais and Mathys who chose the tiger design on Vasilevskiy’s first mask. Why?
“Well, he loves cats,” Marsolais laughed.
When Vasilevskiy made the move to North America, the change to the lion was an easy change for both sides and, regardless of what cat sits on Vasilevskiy’s forehead, Marsolais has had a blast watching the goaltender’s growth on the biggest stages of hockey.
“It’s just fun to be able to see all those goalies evolving from the beginning to where they are now in their careers,” said Marsolais. “It’s funny because the first time I gave Andrei his mask, he told us, ‘This is my Stanley Cup mask.’
“He didn’t win it the first year in Tampa Bay, but it didn’t take much longer before he did it.”
Marsolais estimates that Sylabrush has completed over 700 goalie mask paint jobs over the years. Mask projects can range anywhere from 20-60 hours of work and while Marsolais said she can’t pick a favorite, she could tell me which one took the longest.
“It’s hard to just pick one,” Marsolais said when asked about her favorite mask to date. “It’s always the last one we just finished because it takes so much time to create one. So, when it’s finished, it’s a great achievement and we’re always proud of the results. It’s hard to pick only one.
“Some masks take 20 hours. Others can take 40 hours. I did one that I painted for about 60 hours. It was the toque that was for Michael McNiven. That one probably took the longest time.”
All of the work by Sylabrush is done freehand. That includes two of the most recent projects, dueling chrome masks for Vasilevskiy and Elliott. Both of Tampa Bay’s goaltenders received new masks for the second half of the 2022-23 season and, of course, they both love them.
“She’s been incredible,” Elliott said. “Everything’s come back way better than expected. It’s always awesome to see what you get when you open up that package and you can’t help but smile when you open it.
“It just means so much. That’s our last piece of equipment we put on before we go out and the little meaningful touches that I have, like where I came from, the moose on the back and my son’s initials and stuff, those are the things that you see right before you kind of go out for battle. That’s what I love about it.”
Born in Newmarket, Ontario, Elliott grew up watching some of the great Maple Leafs goalies, from Felix Potvin to Curtis Joseph to Eddie Belfour.
“Potvin was the guy right around when I started being a goalie,” Elliott explained. “Growing up in Toronto, he was the guy that we were watching every night. Then, Cujo was there after that, so he was kind of another guy that I looked up to. Then, Eddie Belfour.
“So, when you have three guys that all have an animal theme, Potvin with the cat, Cujo with the dog, then Eddie the Eagle, I was like, ‘Well, if guys are going to call me the moose, I better have a moose on my mask.”
Elliott’s mask design is a nod to Potvin, who famously rocked his trademark cat mask throughout his career.
“He was one of my heroes growing up,” Elliott explained. “He had a similar mask with the cat eyes and the cat teeth. It’s similar.
“I didn’t want to go too close to it and I think this one has been the best yet. It’s different enough with the color scheme and I love the chromed-out look to it.”
Elliott’s mask has always featured a moose on the backplate, but once he made the move down to Tampa, he had to add a little flare and give the moose some sunglasses for the Florida sun. Additionally, the moose is wearing a mask as a nod to Casey Jones from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with “B1E” as the breathing holes of the mask.
The backplate also features the logo of his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin, along with the initials of his three sons, Owen Daniel, Edward David George and Brooks William.
Elliott’s chrome mask features a palm tree/lightning bolt combination on both sides with his signature moose antlers on top. While extremely similar to his mask from the first half of the season, this mask features one variation on the top, a change that holds a lot of meaning to the veteran netminder.
“I got the outline of an F-35 fighter jet, because my wife was in the Air Force, so I wanted to give her a nod,” Elliott said. “The Air Force Base down here in Tampa, as well as the one in Madison where I live in the summer, they have all the F35s stationed there. Every day we see them flying, so it’s kind of a nod to those sorts of things. .
“These ones have been my favorite. I just love the palm tree with the lightning bolt and the moose antlers. Then, adding the Air Force nod into the mix, too.
“I told her, ‘Try not to make it too obvious. I don’t want a big jet like the Winnipeg Jets.’
“But I wanted her to work it into the design. She put a lot of really good work into it.”
Elliott actually put some of the work into the design of the mask with his own hands, sending Marsolais a rough sketch of what he envisioned before leaving everything else in her hands.
“I’m not an artist,” said Elliott with a laugh. “So, sometimes I’ll draw it out. I was like, ‘This is terrible, but this is where you come in!’
“I just told her, ‘These are the concepts that I want. You go with it.’
“She really did an incredible job.”
Similar to Elliott, Vasilevskiy’s design has remained pretty consistent throughout his time in the NHL.
“It’s been pretty much the same design for the past five or six years,” said Vasilevskiy. “I want my mask to be recognizable. I don’t want to change much about it. I’m comfortable playing with it.
“There’s a big lion head on my forehead. I love cats and my nickname is ‘The Big Cat,’ so it makes sense. Obviously, I have to have lightning bolts playing for the Lightning. I have the Russian logo with the double -headed eagle on both sides, since I’m Russian. That’s about it.”
As Elliott mentioned, the backplate of the mask is the last thing a goaltender sees before he takes the ice. Similar to his counterpart, Vasilevskiy’s most important reminders lie on the backplate of his mask, with the names of his son, Lukas, and his wife, Kseniya, flanking a crucifix set in the middle.
While both Lightning netminders will wear chrome masks to wrap up the 2022-23 regular season, the dueling chrome look was nothing more than coincidence.
“It’s actually pretty funny because we were recently talking about it,” Vasilevskiy said. “I told him I was going to be doing chrome on my mask and he was like, ‘Oh yeah? Me too!’
“So that was pretty funny. His design is pretty cool too, so now we’re both rocking shiny masks.”
For Marsolais, who has been playing goaltender for 25 years, the greatest rewards come in the friendships that have been formed and watching the successes of her clients.
“It’s the greatest sport,” said Marsolais. “It’s been great to be able to watch them on TV, for sure. Andrei has become a great friend to us, since we’ve been working with him for so long.
“When they came here to play Montreal, we were able to go see them before morning skate and stuff like that. It’s always great to be able to chat with them and talk about goalie gear or masks. It’s just been a lot of fun getting to know them.”
With so much time and effort spent on her business, Marsolais just recently painted her own mask, featuring a large dragon, some line work, and her number on the chin, just like Vasilevskiy.
“It took me so long with all of my other clients, but last summer I did it,” said Marsolais with a laugh. “It was just plain white for about five years and all the guys on my team were all laughing at me.”
But all good things take time and Marsolais couldn’t be happier with her mask, just like two of her clients in Elliott and Vasilevskiy couldn’t be happier with theirs.
“You want to be happy about it,” Elliott said. “If you’re not happy with your mask, then you’re going to get a new one pretty soon.”
Needless to say, that’s never been an issue with the exquisite work of Sylabrush.
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