We Built the Hockey Wax We Couldn’t Find
For years, hockey players have had two familiar options: traditional stick wax that feels too soft and sticky, or ordinary candles that were never made for the blade.
NixTin began with a simple belief: neither should be the standard.
From the archives: Calum and Lily fresh off the ice, years before NixTin took shape.
The Problem Was Already in the Bag
Calum has played hockey since childhood. Across years of practices, games and fresh tape jobs, the same compromise kept showing up.
Many traditional hockey waxes went on soft, left a sticky feel and wore down quickly. For players who wanted something harder and cleaner, the familiar workaround was a household candle.
The candle made sense as a shortcut. It was firm, easy to find and less tacky. But it was still a product made to burn, not a wax developed for hockey tape, melting ice and a blade moving shift after shift.
We decided the workaround had lasted long enough.
Candles were never made for hockey. NixTin was.
From a Player Problem to a Purpose-Built Formula
NixTin was founded by Lily Vienneau and Calum Haslam to make the product Calum had spent years looking for.
We worked alongside a veteran wax formulation chemist with extensive experience in the field, combining technical expertise with first-hand experience on the ice. Together, we refined the formula around the details players actually notice: hardness, clean application, clarity and how the wax wears over time.
The goal was never to make another version of the same soft hockey stick wax. It was to take what players liked about a harder wax and develop it properly for the game.
No candle shortcut. No unnecessary stickiness. A hockey wax created for the blade from the beginning.
Meet Snow Shield
The result is Snow Shield, NixTin’s premium hard hockey wax.
It applies cleanly, wears down slowly and helps protect hockey tape from moisture while helping reduce snow and ice buildup on the stick blade.
Snow Shield applies clear without colouring your tape or blade. It delivers the clean feel many players reach for a candle to get, in a formula created specifically for hockey.
Hard wax. Clean feel. Built for hockey.
Built by Players. Held to a Player’s Standard.
NixTin was not created to change the way players prepare their sticks. It was created to make one familiar part of the routine better.
Every decision, from the formula to the tin, comes back to one question:
Would we want this in our own hockey bag every time we stepped on the ice?
That was the standard when we started. It still is.
