In football’s long offseason, the NFL schedule release has become a somewhat important date. It’s a seemingly unimportant event (teams already know who their home and away opponents will be) but it shows that teams are inching towards the season. Fans can start buying tickets and planning trips with actual dates and times in mind.
NFL teams have made a tradition of making short and often humorous videos to accompany their schedule release. ESPN pointed out some of their favorites from this season and the Indianapolis Colts one had to be taken down after causing minor controversy. The Tennessee Titans famously asked random people on Nashville’s Broadway to guess team logos in their video from a few seasons ago that has become the gold standard.
With the social media departments of NHL teams looking for offseason content soon, should they consider making similar videos? For a variety of reasons, we don’t think the trend will catch on in the hockey-verse as it has for football fans. First, the NHL schedule reveal lacks the fanfare the NFL has built around their schedule release as a mini league holiday with its own TV special.
Most important though is the sheer number of games an NHL team plays in comparison to their NFL counterparts. Imagine how long a video would be to announce 82 games all with their own gimmick or graphic? We’d probably lose attention half way through.
The NHL schedule is balanced, with teams playing every team every year. Hockey fans already know the drill of how many games they’ll play against division opponents, non-division conference opponents and non-conference opponents. NFL fans know that for their own division (each team plays a home and an away) but not every team sees each other every year. For some team meetings that are a rarer occurrence, there’s more anticipation.
The NFL also schedules a decent number of international games per year so there’s anticipation about those games -- for example, what week will a certain team be playing in London. The NHL usually announces their Global Series well enough in advance and sometimes those include preseason exhibition games, like a few seasons back when the Los Angeles Kings went to Australia. If your hockey team is playing in an international setting, you most likely know the details a decent amount before the rest of your schedule drops.
Some NHL teams have found a happy medium. Last summer the New Jersey Devils posted a reveal video for key dates of the schedule (not all 82) starring defenseman Dougie Hamilton. Hamilton has jokingly been referred to as the team’s social media admin so he took over the role as “Douglas D. Admin” and donned a fake mustache to let Devils fans know what dates they might want to circle on their calendars.
We admire the creativity, but we just don’t think it’ll work in hockey. Instead, teams will just tweet out their schedule with a link to their website. So far we know the start date for the 2025-2026 NHL season is October 7th as well as dates and matchups for the Winter Classic, Stadium Series, and international games in Sweden. But don't expect every NHL team to join the trend that we've seen have great success for the NFL anytime soon.