Kadri shirt becomes hot seller, raises money for good cause
At first, Adrienne Ruth thought it was a joke.
"My watch went off and it was, 'Ashley Kadri is calling you on Instagram,'" Ruth recalled in her interview with CBS4.
"The kid must have gotten the phone, butt dial, something like that," added Ruth with a smile.
But this was no joke.
"She messaged back and she was like, 'No, seriously, I need you to call me back.'"
So Ruth obliged.
"(Ashley) was like, 'Hey, Naz is on the flight back from Game four, and he wants to know if you can make a shirt for him. She explained it to me, and was like, 'Can you do this image with this text?' and I got a pretty good giggle out of it."
Kadri wanted to poke fun at the fact that Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper had been complaining that the Avs got away with too many men on the ice during Kadri's game-winning goal in overtime of Game four.
Ruth and the Kadris went back and forth on a design, and the Avs centerman was fairly specific about what he wanted. "He wanted to make sure there was six men in it for sure," Ruth explained.
After delivering the shirts to the Kadris prior to the parade, Ruth got to see her design front and center when Kadri and his teammates hoisted the Stanley Cup in front of 500,000 fans at Civic Center Park during the Avs parade and celebration.
When Ruth got home from the parade she and the Kadris began working with EverythingHockey.com to sell the T-shirts.
"I got home from the parade around 2 p.m. and worked to get it up ASAP," Ruth said.
The shirts went up for sale Thursday night, and as of Tuesday, the website had sold nearly 8,000 of them.
"I knew people would want them, but I thought it was going to be local and small. I didn't think it would explode to this degree."
The T-shirts are more than just a catchy slogan. EverythingHockey.com is donating 50% of the proceeds to the Nazem Kadri Foundation, which focuses on giving back and raising awareness for mental health. Ruth isn't making a dime.
"It's amazing. When you look at what his foundation focuses on, I think it's something that's super important."
As of a Twitter post on Monday night, the sales of the T-shirt had raised more than $60,000.
"To know that a T-shirt can provide money to help people along the way is something that you can't replace or find any other way to replicate that feeling knowing how much money is going to the foundation."
Even Jon Cooper can't complain about that.
