By Dave Schwartz Let’s Play Hockey Contributor

It all started with an Eagle.

“He was like this icon!” Todd Miska recalls fondly. “Everybody knew Eddie Belfour.”

The Eagle – Belfour’s nickname – was the first NHL mask that Todd Miska ever painted. Then a Chicago Blackhawk and widely known as one of the best goalies in the NHL, his account fell into Miska’s lap when the helmet maker had contacted him to paint a few designs for Belfour. Little did he know that it would lead to a profitable and passionate business, but also a meeting with someone he’d admired for years.

“All of a sudden one day, I am in my shop and Eddie calls me himself,” Miska says with a smile that can be heard through the phone. “He tells me he likes the masks I designed but wanted to make a few changes. So I suggest that we get together and he tells me to come to Michigan and meet with him.”

Shortly there after Miska was on his way to Saginaw, Mich., to meet with the six-time All-Star netminder in his shop where he built hot rods in the offseason. They spent the day together, designed the mask, had lunch, and when they were through, Belfour even gave him a ride back to the airport. A friendship was forged between the two and a star in the goalie mask design business was about to take off.

“When people find out you do Ed Belfour’s (mask) then everyone’s like, ‘I want you to do mine.’” Miska says. “Because they want a little piece of that feeling like, ‘Hey he does Eddie’s mask and he does mine.’”

If you’ve watched any hockey over the years, you’ve likely seen his work. Names like Evgeni Nabokov, Miikka Kiprusoff, Niklas Backstrom, Josh Harding, Manny Fernandez and many more in the minor and collegiate ranks where masks designed and painted by Todd Miska. All of them done in his “Miska Designs” shop at his home just north of the Twin Cities. Miska has always been a designer and entreprenuer, but painting Masks started as nothing more than a request for his friends at Dave’s Sports Shop in Fridley, Minn.

“One day a kid came in and he had a mask that was ordered and painted in Canada and it had cracked and they said, ’Todd you can duplicate this, can’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well sure I can!’ It was just a lion’s head, so all I did was duplicate it,” he reminisces. “So he wears it to a goalie camp and all the other kids saw it and wanted theirs done. I got five calls from that one camp the kid went to.”

A billboard painter at the time, Miska continued his goalie mask design business on the side just in case something happened to the billboard painting industry. Which ended up being a perfect plan.

“The billboard design business went digital overnight,” Miska says. “And at that time, the masks were coming in enough that if the billboards quit tomorrow, I could make enough money painting goalie masks.”

Now he does both, somewhat. He installs billboards for his main job (and for exercise) and the rest of the time does his masks – which can take him up to three days to complete.

“I’ll sit here all day painting goalie masks and my body gets no movement,” he says. “And its great because I can change the days up so I’ll paint all morning then hang (billboards) in the afternoon or hang in the morning and paint in the afternoon. Just to keep the body going.”

What really gets him going at this stage is his career is the joy of designing masks. There is one, however, he has been more invested in than others. That is for his son, Hunter, now a freshman and starting goalie at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Hunter grew up in his dad’s shop, watching over his shoulder while he worked. Todd’s love of goalie mask design was passed on. Hunter designed a few of his own masks during his time in juniors, but when it came time for the real thing in college – he knew it was time to call in the pro.

“He (Hunter) designed it the way he wanted it and then we collaborated a bit. But then he said, ‘Dad you have to do this one for me. I gotta focus on playing.’”

Watching his sons play hockey has become a third job for Todd. He and his wife travel to Duluth nearly every weekend to watch Hunter and his other son playing nearby at Wisconsin-Superior. Which is why he is scaling back on his mask business for now and just selecting a few here and there. That is a hard thing for a guy who wholeheartedly believes that if you love your job, you never work a day in your life.

“It really isn’t work, it’s just fun,” Miska laughs. “I have so many guys who say, ‘Man, I wish I could sit here and do what you do.’”

But the fact that so few can is really what has made Miska Designs soar from that very first Eagle so many years ago.