The NHL was “Hot for Hockey”. For about a week.
Update: October 5, 2026
We were suppose to publish this today. Then the NHL pulled “Hot for Hockey” off Spotify less than a week after it launched. The original take is still down below, but now we have a WHOLE different one.
On Monday, Front Office Sports reported that the NHL removed every Hot for Hockey episode from Spotify and won't make any more. Seven audio shorts, six players. ONE WEEK.
The league's explanation is that it was always meant to be a one-week campaign tied to the first games of the season. A spokesperson said its marketing is now focused on other things, including a celebrity campaign called Hockey Hits Different.
That's not what the league said a week ago. When Hot for Hockey launched, Sports Business Journal reported the NHL planned to roll out stories throughout the season. And a campaign that was always meant to end usually stays up when it ends. These were pulled entirely and the league won't say why. The NHLPA still isn't commenting.
Our take: That's damage control.
I can't prove what happened inside the league office, but the timeline doesn't match the explanation. Planned campaigns don't get scrubbed, controversial ones do.
Go back to what Bettman said during the first week, while it was still live. The data on new fans was overwhelming, and since it seemed to be a cultural phenomenon, the league figured why not get on board. That's the whole problem in one sentence. "Why not get on board" isn't a strategy. It's a trend chase and it’s clear that didn’t come with a plan for week two.
One week isn't a test. It’s not even relevant sample data.
The NHL didn't fail because it chased the romance audience. Everything we wrote below about that audience still stands. It failed because there was no next step. So when the first step landed at 2.4 stars, there was nothing to fix, iterate or build on. There was only the delete button.
And look where the league went next. A celebrity campaign. That's the old entrance. Millions of new fans walked in through a door the NHL didn't build, and the league tried one thing at the new door, got roasted, and went right back to standing where it's always stood.
The part that frustrates me is what does that tell the groups of new fans that came in. They showed up. The league listened and made something for them. Then it vanished without an explanation. That's worse than never trying. It tells an audience that already wondered whether hockey had room for them that the answer is "for about a week." The NHL NEEDS to do better.
The new lesson for brands:
If you're going after a new audience, don't just plan the launch. Plan for an absolute disaster and a success. What happens if people hate it? What are you actually willing to change? If the honest answer is "take it down and hope nobody notices," you're not ready to launch it.
And if it does miss, just say so. Something like, that one didn't land, we heard you, here's what we're doing next. People respect that way more than pretending it was the plan all along.
The NHL totally had that option. Thank the authors, tell the new fans you heard them and you're still building for them - honestly, maybe even involve them. Instead we got told it was always the plan, and nobody's buying that. Especially not the fans who showed up for it.
The NHL found the audience. Now it has to figure out what they actually want.
Here’s what we wrote last week, before the league pulled it. Read it knowing how the story ended.
The NHL opened the 2026-27 season with romance novels. Not literally, but basically.
Its new Hot for Hockey campaign turns real NHL players and storylines into short, romance-inspired audio stories written and narrated by actual hockey romance authors a la BookTok. Jack Eichel gets Jack of Hearts. Trevor Zegras gets The Summer I Turned Gritty. Connor McDavid gets Chasing Connor.
It's kinda weird. It's getting dragged online. And strategically, I think it’s one of the best moves the NHL marketing has made in years. Now, what they're doing with it, seems off.
The problem isn't that the league is funneling the hockey romance audience. It absolutely should have. It was a fantastic acquisition move. The problem is that it may have confused how people discovered hockey with why they start to love it.
First, the NHL isn't imagining this audience.
The numbers behind this aren't small. I personally was an obsessed and loyal NHL watcher even before Heated Rivalry. It didn't surprise me that the cult following would crave more and turn to actual hockey.
According to ESPN, nearly 1.8 million people watched professional hockey for the first time last season after watching Heated Rivalry or Off Campus. ESPN's average female audience across the Stanley Cup Playoffs increased 164% year over year, from 298,000 viewers per game in 2025 to 786,000 in 2026.
That is not a social media trend. That's customer acquisition. And the NHL's new CMO, Sean Eggert, seems to understand that.
Since joining the league from Under Armour in May, he's talked about being much more intentional about audience segmentation rather than taking a one message approach. The league is going into BookTok, working with authors and creators already inside hockey romance culture, and trying to meet this audience somewhere other than a traditional sports broadcast. That part is smart.
The problem I’m seeing though is that if millions of potential customers are entering your category through a completely unexpected door, you don't wait around at the old entrance. You need to go meet them where they are.
Hot for Hockey gets a lot right.
The format makes sense. The NHL hired actual hockey romance authors. The stories live on Spotify. BookTok creators are part of the distribution strategy, so you borrow their audience. Each story takes a real NHL storyline, packages it using the language and conventions of romance, then points the listener toward an upcoming game.
That's a pretty clean funnel. You start with a genre you already love. You meet a real player and get pulled into a real storyline. Then you have a reason to turn on an actual game.
Dont get me wrong, the 2013 "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" playoff hype videos changed my life but this new strategy is significantly more interesting than a video of big hits with a Fall Out Boy song or Connor McDavid in another ad telling people hockey is exciting.
And maybe most importantly, the NHL is actually acknowledging that different audiences can enter a sport for different reasons. You don't have to discover hockey because your dad took you to a game when you were eight.
Maybe BookTok served you a hockey romance. Maybe you strive to be Jessica Campbell or maybe you thought a player was hot or were fascinated about a WAGs fashion on Instagram. Who cares?
If that gets you through the door, the league has an opportunity to turn curiosity into fandom. That's where Hot for Hockey loses the vision a bit.
The acquisition channel isn't necessarily the consumer insight.
This is the part I think brands should pay attention to. Hockey romance helped introduce a huge group of people to hockey. That doesn't automatically mean those people want the NHL to make hockey romance for them. Those are two very different things.
Someone can discover Formula 1 through Drive to Survive without wanting Formula 1 to turn every race broadcast into Drive to Survive. Someone can discover a fashion brand becaiuse of a celebrity without wanting every product subsequently designed around that celebrity. The thing that gets someone into a category is not always the thing that makes them stay.
And once these new fans crossed over from fiction into actual hockey, they discovered something better than a marketing campaign could manufacture. The sport already has stories. Rivalries. Personalities. Trades. Fashion. Friendships. Villains. Redemption arcs. Playoff heartbreak. Players people become irrationally attached to.
The NHL doesn't actually need to invent romance around Jack Eichel. It needs to make him interesting enough that someone who arrived through hockey romance wants to know what happens to him next.
That's a subtle difference. But strategically, it's everything.
That's where the execution starts to slip.
The initial reaction hasn't exactly been a love story. As of October 1, the series was averaging 2.4 stars on Spotify. Fans questioned whether the players had even agreed to participate, prompting the NHL to publicly confirm that the featured players had approved their creative.
Then there's the content. Despite being packaged as hockey romance, the stories don't actually contain romance between the players. They're real hockey storylines written with romance-novel language and suggestive production. Which creates an odd middle ground. It's too romance-coded for people who just want hockey. But for some of the romance audience, it isn't really romance either.
And Heated Rivalry makes that tension harder to ignore. A major part of that story's cultural impact came from its queer relationship. The NHL has borrowed the aesthetic and language surrounding the phenomenon while removing one of its most distinctive elements.
That doesn't mean the NHL needed to fictionalize relationships between real players. It absolutely didn't. It does mean the league needed to think carefully about what exactly it was borrowing from the culture and why that connected in the first place. That's the difference between participating in a community and replicating its packaging.
Who actually walked in the door?
The NHL is treating its new audience like one group. It’s at least three and Hot for Hockey is only speaking to one of them. Romance readers came for the stories as they found hockey through books and BookTok. They are who this campaign is built for and thats fair, and the place to start.
Queer fans came because Heated Rivalry is a queer love story, and like I said above, the campaign left that part out. And the league is courting this audience while keeping Pride Jerseys and merch OFF the ice. In 2023, the NHL announced it would be eliminating themed warmup jerseys after refusals to wear and that ban still stands. As a merch person, this is the part I can’t get past. Teams still design and sell Pride jerseys but players can’t wear them. That’s selling the product while telling the customers your main “product” won’t be seen in it.
Then we have the women who have been lifelong hockey fans. I’m one of them. They understand icing and offside. They have favorite players for reasons beyond a jaw line and have been buying tickets jerseys and merch for years. A campaign that assumes women are here for “dates” and eye candy tells them they are not seen by the league.
In sports apparel we often faced a challenge of “shrinking and pinking” aka taking a men’s product, making it in smaller sizes and throwing traditionally female associated colors on it. It never worked because we weren’t actually addressing our audience. So, keep the romance play just don’t let it be the strategy for everyone.
“Women” isn’t a consumer segment. Neither is “new fan”. A romance reader is. A Queer fan who found the sport through Heated Rivalry is. A lifer is. Their relationship with the product is completely different. Segmentation that stops as a demographic is just a new color palette.
What I'd do next:
I wouldn't kill Hot for Hockey. I'd use it as the top of the funnel.
If romance is bringing people into hockey, great. Own that. Have fun with it. Let The Summer I Turned Gritty exist because, frankly, that title is fantastic and I hope it turns into a social series.
But then build the next step. Someone finishes Jack of Hearts? Don't just tell her when Vegas plays next. Give her Jack Eichel's actual story.
Why Vegas wanted him. What happened in Buffalo (cause I still want that tea) and why winning the Cup mattered. And now that he has the cup, what to watch for when he's on the ice. Teach the game, make the romance discovery into true player fandom.
Turn player fandom into team fandom. Turn team fandom into game viewing and that will turn into tickets, merch and community. That's the actual opportunity.
Hot for Hockey shouldn't be the destination. It should be the handoff.
The lesson for brands:
There's a bigger GTM strategy lesson here than whether the NHL made a good campaign.
Follow unexpected demand. If consumers are finding your category somewhere you never planned for, pay attention. The market is telling you something. Then separate acquisition from retention. Understand what brought someone in, then figure out what will make them stay.
Don't confuse demographics with audiences. "Women" isn't a strategy. Neither is Gen Z. Segment around behavior, motivation and relationship with the product. And borrow the culture carefully. Using a community's language is easy. Understanding why that language matters to them is harder and this is where brands miss.
Most of all, build the next step. Awareness without somewhere meaningful to go is just attention.
The NHL's biggest opportunity isn't romance.
It's conversion. Nearly 1.8 million people reportedly walked into hockey through a door the NHL didn't build. That's an incredible gift for any brand.
The league was right to notice it. It was right to follow it. And honestly, it was right to experiment instead of serving those consumers the same hockey marketing it's been making for decades.
Hot for Hockey just feels like the first draft. Because the goal isn't to turn hockey into romance. It's to take someone who came for the romance and give them enough reasons to fall for hockey.
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