Church of Kakko was the brain child of Ryan Mead, one of the hosts of The Athletic's Blueshirts Breakaway podcast. He along with myself and Nick Depalo of Empirical are all New York Rangers fans, who were excited when the Rangers won the draft lottery to select second overall. It looked like they would select Finnish winger Kaapo Kakko.
Ryan reached out to me with the goofy idea to start a fake church around Kaapo Kakko, to get the rest of the fanbase hyped up for the upcoming superstar. None of us had any idea what this goofy idea would evolve into.
Nick was tasked with creating the branding and merch designs, while I was to create the website. I wanted to make the site seem as serious as possible, even though it was all a joke.
Ryan took on the role of the Pope of the religion, affectionately reffered to by the followers of the Church of Kakko as The Kaapope
.
To celebrate the unexpected success of the Church of Kakko, Nick, Ryan, Greg who is the other hose of the podcast, and myself went to the very first game that Kakko would play in. Ryan went dressed as the Kaapope and needless to say I lost count of all the people who stopped us to take a picture with Ryan.
It feels good to get to be a part of something that brings so much joy to people.
