The NHL has grown seen recent growth in popularity over the years, coming in at a whopping total of 5.33 million viewers in last season’s Stanley Cup match-up between the Boston Bruins and the St. Louis Blues. The NHL is known for not being the best at marketing some of their superstars, but have started adapting to the modern age through content making on social media platforms such as Youtube, Twitter and Snapchat.

Despite the recent growth there will always be room to improve, one idea they could potentially look into is doing something similar to the MLB with their “Player Weekend” concept, during this weekend MLB players are allowed to use creative styles of baseball bats, customize their own cleats and wear their nicknames on the back of their jerseys.

For example, New York Yankees superstar Aaron Judge donned a jersey with “All Rise” on the back. This weekend allows the MLB players and fans to have a fun and creative weekend for everyone, which certainly leads to more people tuning in and more money being made through jersey sales from this weekend alone, it is truly a win-win for everyone.

The NHL could at least allow the players to wear their nicknames on the back of their jerseys. Teams such as the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning have already done this during warm-ups, where players such as Nikita Kucherov had “Kuuuch” on the back of his jersey.

The NHL can even go one step further and auction off the custom jerseys after the game and allow the players to donate that money to a charity of their choice. The NHL would make their money through the regular non-game used jersey sales, as fans would love to buy these unique jerseys that are only worn for this weekend.

The concept of using custom made and designed skates or hockey sticks is plausible but could be too “over the top” for some.

The NHL would more importantly have a massive amount of viewership, where they can truly use this opportunity to help grow the game and market their stars all throughout North America.

They could have games being shown all day on NBCSN (or even NBC but that’s a stretch) similar to what they do for “Hockey Day In Canada and Hockey Day In America”.

Now just for the fun of it lets go through the potential nicknames for the New York Islanders players
#1 Thomas Greiss – Greisser
#2 Nick Leddy – Ledster or Ledpipe
#3 Adam Pelech – Pelly
#6 Ryan Pulock – 💩🔒
#7 Jordan Eberle – Ebs
#8 Noah Dobson – Dobber
#10 Derick Brassard – Brassy
#12 Josh Bailey – Bails
#13 Mathew Barzal – Barzy
#14 Tom Kuhnackhl – Tommy K
#15 Cal Clutterbuck – Clutter
#16 Andrew Ladd – Gary
#17 Matt Martin – Martsy
#18 Anthony Beauvillier – Beau or Tito
#24 Scott Mayfield – Scotty
#25 Devon Toews – Tazer
#27 Anders Lee – Leeber
#28 Michael Dal Colle – MDC
#29 Brock Nelson – Nelly or Brocktober
#32 Ross Johnston – Ross The Boss
#40 Seymon Varlamov – Varly
#44 Sebastian Aho – TBD
#47 Leo Komarov – Uncle Leo
#53 Casey Cizikas – Zeeker
#55 Johnny Boychuk – Johnny Rocket

John Smark