NHL ices short-lived Hot for Hockey marketing…
The NHL is placing its “Hot for Hockey” audiobook marketing campaign on ice.
Less than a week after the NHL began releasing a sequence of short tales in audiobook type that function current gamers in real-life NHL storylines through the lens of a romance novel, the league has discontinued the marketing initiative, Front Office Sports reported.
In fact, the NHL has wiped Spotify utterly of the seven 30-to-90-second audio tales that had already been launched last Thursday, most of which acquired adverse suggestions on social media.
The NHL was making an attempt to capitalize on the recognition of the hockey-themed romance novel development as properly as the new curiosity from followers of the hit reveals “Heated Rivalry” and “Off Campus.”
Initially, Sports Business Journal reported that the NHL deliberate to release these short tales throughout the season, but the league told Front Office Sports on Monday that the marketing marketing campaign was only meant to be a one-week factor related with the start of the season.
A league spokesperson didn’t clarify why the tales have been eliminated from Spotify.
“As a start of the season concept, these were matchup specific posts created by authentic authors, illustrators and voice actors designed to run during our opening games in the first week. Our marketing now is focused around many other activations including our Hockey Hits Different celebrity campaign, tune-in messages and other initiatives,” the league spokesperson said.
No precise romance was concerned in the audio tales, but they did evoke a related really feel to the fashion that hockey romance novels are meant to convey.
The SBJ report asserting the marketing campaign indicated that the league had contracted in style hockey romance authors to write and narrate the tales launched by the NHL.
Among the first installments launched was one that includes Jack Eichel and another that included Sebastian Aho.
Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers seems on during warm-up prior to a sport against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Tuesday, September 29, 2026. Getty Images
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters in Pittsburgh that the “data is overwhelming in terms of new fans that we acquired last year who were first introduced to hockey either through Off Campus or Heated Rivalry” before including that “since it seems to be a cultural phenomenon, we figured why not get on board.”
The NHL’s endeavor into the hockey romance novel or “BookTok” space shouldn’t come as an excessive amount of of a shock, contemplating the recognition Bettman famous, but the league’s considerably checkered historical past with it does raise some eyebrows.
The NHL has iced its short-lived ‘Hot for Hockey’ marketing marketing campaign. NHL/Spotify
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie are pictured in “Heated Rivalry” Season 1, Episode 1, on Monday, April 28, 2025. HBO
Three years in the past, former Kraken ahead Alex Wennberg, who now performs for the Sharks, and his spouse, Felicia, had to put out a assertion condemning the “BookTok” fan fixation on Wennberg that she described as “inappropriate harassment, inappropriate comments.”
“What doesn’t sit with me is when your desires come with inappropriate harassment, inappropriate comments and the fact that, with the Internet, we can normalize behavior that would never be OK if we flipped the genders around to a guy doing this to a female athlete,” she wrote at the time.
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