With the puck scheduled to drop on the NHL playoffs on Saturday (April 20), the league has launched this year’s postseason marketing push.

The campaign for the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs launched on Monday, showing the wild things hockey fans do to support their favourite teams. The campaign includes three spots that will launch on the NHL’s digital and social media platforms, and debut on Monday night’s ESPN broadcast of the game between the Minnesota Wild and Los Angeles Kings.

The 30-second commercials feature a Vegas Golden Knights fan prematurely getting a Stanley Cup championship tattoo in 2019 before the team was shortly eliminated from the playoffs, a Nashville Predators fan trying to smuggle a dead catfish into the team’s arena to toss onto the ice for good luck, and two lifelong Colorado Avalanche fans agreeing to end their 10-year relationship since the last time their team won the cup they watched it separately. 

The campaign will run across TV broadcasting in Canada and the U.S., with American agency Highdive creating the campaign in collaboration with the league.

While marketing campaigns for the playoffs in past years focused on game action and players, this year’s focus on fans allows for a more human and humourous tone, with an aim to create a refreshing and fun campaign, says NHL SVP of marketing and branding Casey Hall.

“We wanted to show the extreme passion NHL fans have for their teams during the Playoffs, and do it in a fun, welcoming way that sports fans who aren’t big NHL fans would understand and relate to,” Hall tells strategy.

“We believe the idea that ‘love makes you do crazy things’ is a universal theme that will resonate with sports fans everywhere.”

The idea came from social media posts and coverage about NHL fans who got tattoos celebrating their team winning a Stanley Cup before the team actually won, Hall says. The act sparked an idea for the NHL about how passionate and irrational sports fans can get when it comes to supporting their favourite team.

This year’s advertising campaign is consistent with past years in the media platforms and spending levels involved with the work. But Hall says the league is using a slightly higher level of planned digital support this season to try and reach general sports fans in the U.S.