The NHL introduced a new video series at the start of this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs in an effort to draw more attention to the league’s star players. The series is titled Cup Confidential and asks players to take videos of themselves engaging in everyday moments away from the rink.
At the start of the playoffs, the NHL asked each of the 16 postseason teams to nominate a player who would use his own phone to document personal moments, often shot in selfie-fashion. The videos have been posted across the NHL’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube accounts. Data compiled by the NHL through May 16 showed Cup Confidential videos have combined for a total of 12.6 million views and 74 million impressions across all platforms.
“We thought it would be interesting to essentially get a diary from our players,” said Steve Mayer, the NHL’s chief content officer. “It’s worked as well or better than we could have imagined. We hope we’re giving fans a unique and raw inside look into the playoffs.”
Cup Confidential’s most-viewed video through May 16 was a 38-second clip from the Boston Bruins’ Cup Confidential ambassador Chris Wagner. But although the video originates from Wagner’s Cup Confidential profile, his teammate Brad Marchand is actually the one narrating and filming.
In the video, Marchand jokes around with his teammates in a dining area the night before the Bruins played the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs. The video amassed more than 400,000 views on Facebook, the most of any Cup Confidential video on any platform. Marchand and the Bruins will host the St. Louis Blues in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday.
“It’s morphed into other players grabbing cameras and doing things on their own,” Mayer said. “In Boston’s case, Chris Wagner is the guy they pinned as their Cup Confidential ambassador, yet every single time we see something from Boston that comes in, it seems like Brad Marchand has hijacked the phone.”
When Toronto Maple Leafs forward Tyler Ennis filmed his 22-year-old teammate Mitch Marner eating ice cream as a pregame meal, the video triggered an in-game response. Veteran NHL referee Wes McCauley discussed their mutual love for ice cream with Marner during Game 5 of Round 1 agains the Bruins.
“I love ice cream too!”
Wes McCauley asking @Marner93 about his ice cream swirling technique mid-game is everything. #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/mc0xchXBcz
— NHL (@NHL) April 19, 2019
“In the NHL, we mic our players, coaches, referees, and we captured this conversation which was all based on the referee [McCauley] obviously watching Cup Confidential,” Mayer said. “So suddenly we have this whole sequence just based on something that took place during Cup Confidential.”
Mayer noted that Cup Confidential videos have tended to get the most views on Instagram through the platform’s “Stories” feature, but that some videos have done extraordinarily well on Facebook.
As the Stanley Cup Playoffs progressed, fewer and fewer teams have been left standing, and that means fewer Cup Confidential ambassadors, and thus less new content. But Mayer is hoping that the idea will feature in the NHL’s future content strategy.
“Our hope is that this is something that could potentially continue in the regular season next year. We viewed this as a very successful segment for the playoffs and we are eyeing how we can continue this for the regular season,” he said.