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Most professional athletes are more than happy to take advantage of endorsement deals to put some extra cash in their pockets. That includes Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobes, although his decision to post some photos of himself posing on a mattress on Instagram led to a number of his teammates hopping into the comments to chirp him.
You don’t necessarily need a form of secondary income if you’re getting paid millions of dollars a year to play a sport for living, but the attention and fame you can attract in that particular line of work also tends to present plenty of opportunities to cash in on your profile with the help of the many brands on the hunt for notable ambassadors.
As the athletes who found themselves listed as defendants after agreeing to promote FTX learned the hard way, there can be some downsides to agreeing to a sponsorship deal. However, if someone’s going to give you a sizeable amount of money to devote a relatively small amount of time to pose for some pictures and maybe film a commercial or two, the upsides tend to outweigh the negatives.
It goes without saying that the most lucrative opportunities tend to be reserved for bona fide superstars, but you don’t have to be a household name to have an offer sent your way. An up-and-coming NHL netminder recently decided to capitalize on his growing profile, but he may be having second thoughts due to the reception he got after sharing the end result.
Canadiens goalie Jakub Dobes posted a sponsored ad for a mattress company on Instagram and got chirped into oblivion by his teammates
Jakub Dobes was born in the Czech Republic but moved to the United States as a teenager to chase his dreams of becoming a professional hockey player, and he came one step closer to that goal when the Montreal Canadiens selected him in the fifth round of the 2020 NHL Draft.
The goaltender played college hockey at Ohio State before making the leap to the AHL, and last season, he got off to a 5-0 start after making his NHL debut in December and ultimately finished with a 7-4-3 record while serving as the primary backup for Habs goalie Sam Montembeault.
The 24-year-old initially signed a two-year deal worth $1.85 million before inking a two-year extension in July that upped that number to $1.93 million, so while he’s certainly not scraping by, he still has some work to do to reach the NHL average annual salary of around $3.5 million.
However, he was able to leverage his rising profile into an endorsement deal with Jump, the mattress-in-a-box brand created by the Quebec-based bed company Matelas Bonheur. It would appear he was supplied with a free mattress and may have received some extra cash for plugging it on Instagram, although the two pictures he posted garnered plenty of attention he probably wasn’t looking for.
Current and former Canadiens, including Patrik Laine, Arber Xhekaj, and Jayden Struble, quickly chimed in to roast Dobes, although his former AHL teammate (and fellow goalie) Kasimir Kaskisuo probably had the best jab with “Dude relax my wife is on this app…”
Dobes might want to think twice before he agrees to his next sponsorship.