Back in the summer of 2020, I had a terrible idea that felt like a good idea, which wasn’t exactly a unique experience at the time. But while you were all experimenting with TikTok dances and sourdough starters, I decided it would be fun to set up an international exchange of terrible playoff commercials.
You know the kind — the ones that seem to show up every single ad break, tormenting you until you know every word, leading to you at least casually considering finding out who worked on it and paying them a visit. I knew there were some awful Canadian ads, but I figured there were probably plenty happening south of the border, and I thought that if we held an exchange then a good time would be held by all.
Then Sean Gentille made me watch Tara Tara Look At Her Go, and I’ve never fully recovered.
I hit back with the Sportsnet Life Coach in 2021, and after a year off, we were back last year with a heart like a truck. But we were worried because, after that first year, the ads hadn’t been quite as bad. They were maybe even getting better. We wondered if we’d have to abandon the gimmick, because the advertising industry had stopped producing annoying garbage.
Well, let’s just say our concerns were addressed this year. We’ll get to that.
But first, let’s take a peek behind the curtain and see what this year’s game plan looked like for both sides.
Pregame Strategy
McIndoe: First of all, this feels like a good place to mention that you’ve all spent weeks taunting me with the words “What a pro wants,” and I’m vaguely terrified of what I’m about to see.
So yeah, my list of bad Canadian ads. This was a tough list to narrow down, so much so that when I put out a call for nominees on X, I was surprised by some of the ads that weren’t mentioned. Really, none of you hate that ad with the couple watching a playoff game in off-brand Leafs jerseys who reveal that they also have backups for Edmonton and Vancouver, just in case? Yes, if there’s one thing we know about Toronto hockey fans, it’s that they’re notoriously rational about being open to rooting for more successful teams.
Speaking of the Leafs, it was tough not to go with those insurance ads featuring Morgan Rielly lying facedown on the floor to avoid basic life decisions. They’re bad, but I have to give some grudging credit to whichever executive said “It’s playoff time, a commercial featuring a Toronto Maple Leaf star being completely overwhelmed and useless will really resonate.”
One frequent nominee that I decided against is those financial ads that are part of a running campaign whose theme seems to be “Super annoying people talk down to their friends about investment fees.” I didn’t use those because Sean would only be seeing that little campfire loser once, and you don’t really get the full effect until you’ve had to hear him say he’s better than you roughly a dozen times. Per night.
Most importantly, I ruled out all gambling ads, mainly because they’re pretty much universally terrible. Honestly, I could do a top 10 worst gambling ads list and still not have room for some all-timers. It’s bad enough that this nascent legal gambling industry is destroying lives and ruining every game broadcast, the least they could do is sprinkle in a watchable ad among the hundreds they force on us every game. But yeah, special shoutout to the one featuring the smug Canadian who insists Americans don’t know hockey, which was the runaway leader among your nominations.
OK, let’s end with the most important pre-game strategy there can be: Relax, breathe, and have fun with this thing.
Gentille: McIndoe has spent the last couple of months swearing, up and down, that he hasn’t watched the “What a pro wants” commercial. Doesn’t know who’s involved with it. Doesn’t know the premise. A few years ago, I’d be skeptical — but we’ve got a podcast together now. I’m more acutely aware of his particular brand of brain poisoning, and I believe that he’s indeed fully in the dark. The only question is when to drop the hammer.
As for the rest of the field? My North American friends, it is robust. At one point, I contemplated including an Actually Good commercial starring an NHL player (thank you, Juuse Saros) strictly for shock value. Alas. I’m also on Team “Let’s Just Try To Ignore Gambling Ads,” so that specific sign of societal decline will be wholly absent from our exercise. There will be others, obviously — just not that one. Also, the ESPN+ placeholder isn’t eligible here. Executive decision.
Ultimately, despite a deeper field than perhaps any we’ve seen post-pandemic, my top three are fairly cut-and-dry … especially since both countries got to meet the “Avs breakup” couple. Let’s go.
Commercial No. 1
McIndoe: I’m going to start with a strategic move. Since I figure you’ve got “What a Pro Wants” hitting cleanup, I’m going to lead off with one of my best options.
And for the record, I know that this won’t feel completely new to you, because there are at least two American versions of this ad that came first. I’ve watched them, and I promise you, this one is worse. So much worse.
Gentille: The main reason this isn’t new to me — it’s a play on “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” a novelty rap song that came out when I was still in college. The music group Das Racist was the opening act at multiple concerts I attended between the years of 2008 and 2011.
What I’m saying is that you can’t kill me; I’m already dead.
McIndoe: I’m familiar with that song. It’s bad. This is so much worse. And I have more than a few questions. Is this guy supposed to look stoned? What happens early on that makes everyone in the crowd whip their heads around like they have whiplash? Did number 11 get a third-man-in penalty for jumping into the fight?
Gentille: Also, how did Mattias Ekholm get the time off necessary to appear here?
McIndoe: And look, I think we can all agree that the older lady has a fair point when she asks for clarification on him being at the grocery store. But what about the big guy who’s confused about him being at a hockey game? My dude, you’re at the game too! He’s sitting next to you! That’s not the part that should be throwing you off.
Gentille: The big fella might be hallucinating. Honestly, I’m wondering if any of the visuals in this one are AI-generated. I feel like that might be a recurring theme. There’s an “uncanny valley” situation going on in the stands.
McIndoe: AI overlords, please comb through all of human creation and use it to generate the most annoying jingle possible.
Gentille: No no, I’m saving that for later. What we’ve got up first is a classic of the genre — an obnoxious insurance commercial. This one is for Progressive, and it somehow doesn’t involve Flo… or worse, the repulsive Jamie. No random, relentlessly recurring characters whose names we’ve learned against our will. Just a ghost.
McIndoe: He’s trying really hard to sound like Will Ferrell, right? Like I’m not imagining that?
Gentille: Affirmative. We might not be far from the actual Will Ferrell showing up in stuff like this. Seriously though, wouldn’t it be just SO RANDOM if a ghost showed up in an insurance commercial? This feels like a relic of ’00s internet culture — sort of like a parody Twitter account. Which is something neither of us knows anything about.
McIndoe: Haha, of course. (Blinks awkwardly.) So they clearly feel like “You got bamboozled” is the money catch phrase here. How often have you used it so far during the playoffs? Do you turn to your friends during a game and yell it after a bad call? I bet you do. It’s probably the new “whazzzup” down there.
Gentille: It’s now how I hang up the phone. Here’s my main issue — I don’t need a constant reminder of how much more expensive stuff is now vs. 200 years ago or whatever, and I definitely don’t want it to come from an insurance company that seems to dump 75 percent of peoples’ premium into antagonistic, Reddit-flavored commercial campaigns. I hate this one, probably more than the average viewer.
McIndoe: Most annoyingly overplayed ghost in the hockey playoffs since the Montreal Forum shut down, am I right?
Gentille: “You got bamboozled!” — Mitch Marner, as he floats away from another board battle.
McIndoe: Too soon. Ready for ad number two?
Gentille: Not really.
Commercial No. 2
McIndoe: For my second ad, let’s go with one that answers the eternal question: What if we combined a product that absolutely nobody asked for with the most unsettling chemistry imaginable?
Gentille: One of my favorite rites of passage for young American hockey writers: excitement over getting to try Tim Hortons, followed quickly by disappointment in Tim Hortons, eventually reaching repulsion by Tim Hortons. I wouldn’t eat a donut from that place, let alone a Bacon Everything Pizza.
McIndoe: For any Americans who aren’t familiar, Tim Hortons is a Canadian chain that sells coffee. They also have a food menu with roughly nine dozen items, none of which are ever available when you try to order them. You walk in and stand next to a giant sign with a photo of a sandwich, order that exact sandwich, and the staff will look at you like you just called in a bomb threat. I’ll believe in a ghost who inspects fireplaces before I believe that there’s a Tims out there making pizza quickly and efficiently.
But let’s get to the important stuff: Are these two hooking up on the down low, or what?
Gentille: No. If they were, she’d have said, “I could use a coffee too, I’ll tag along,” and then they’d have had a nice walk. What I’m trying to figure out is how they take opposite turns when they exit the building, then manage to end up at the same place. “That’s a necessary conceit for the commercial,” you might be saying. That could be true for a commercial we’re not forced to watch several hundred times. Not here, though. It needs to hold up to the rigor of the NHL playoff schedule.
McIndoe: I’ll go one further: There are more Tim Hortons in Canada than there are actually Canadians. They’re everywhere. Without exaggeration, there are three different spots within 10 minutes of my house where there’s a Tim Hortons across the street from another Tim Hortons. You don’t even need to run to get to a Tims in Canada. Walking about fifteen steps should do it. So I have no idea what’s happening here, especially given that the guy somehow arrives after she’s had time to order and receive an armful of pizzas.
Gentille: He ran out of the building without any real idea where he was going and figured he’d stumble into a Tims eventually — and he was correct.
McIndoe: By the way, shoutout to this guy for being this year’s “Random Canadian actor you haven’t seen before who’s suddenly in way too many commercials all at once”. A tradition like no other. He’s definitely the guy who gets face paint mushed on him in a seltzer ad, but the jury is still out on whether he’s also the guy who eats a Kit Kat with a snake. That sentence probably didn’t make much sense to you.
Gentille: Canada basically has one of everything: one coffee and donut chain, one everything store, one pizza place, one commercial actor …
McIndoe: One Stanley Cup-worthy team per decade.
Gentille: Possibly zero people who’d eat Tim Hortons flatbread pizza on their own volition. OK, mine has an actual famous person.
McIndoe: Oh cool, I was hoping to have an existential crisis today. Is this the part where I have to show how little pop culture I know by saying I think this is Stifler’s mom?
Gentille: It *is* Stifler’s mom.
McIndoe: Hell yeah! I’m just going to assume she hasn’t been in anything else in the last 20 years and keep moving.
Gentille: Jennifer Coolidge was great in the first season of “The White Lotus” — great enough, in fact, for lots of people to think stuff like, “Hey, Jennifer Coolidge should be in everything.” I’m not here to pass judgment on how that’s worked out, but “everything” definitely has extended to Discover card commercials that play on TV, radio, streaming and podcast ad breaks. There are dozens of these; NHL broadcasts have zeroed in on the robot edition.
The premise, as far as I can tell, is that she’s stupid and harasses the customer service staff. Which is … kind of her character in “The White Lotus,” now that I think about it.
McIndoe: We’re what, three months away from a national conversation about whether it’s offensive to use terms like “you robotos” to AI prompts? This ad won’t age well. I’m calling it now.
Gentille: Honestly, I was going to include one of the several commercials that talks about how much better their products have gotten due to AI integration, just because of the amount of dread and dissonance they cause for me, but this is close enough. Also, did you notice the ticking clock in that one? It makes it worse by 20 percent.
McIndoe: Times running out, humanity. Stifler’s mom says so. (By the way, I’m very clearly stalling here because I’m filled with an icy fear over what’s coming in the next section.)
Gentille: Time is running out … on you. Next.
Commercial No. 3
McIndoe: For my last Canadian ad, I’m going to present one that I’ll admit up front is not terrible. It’s not even all that bad. But there’s no commercial that’s caused more anger up here than this one. Not even close. And you’ll see why.
Gentille: So you’re not wearing a Fernando Pisani Oilers jersey as we work on this? Is that what you’re saying?
McIndoe: Believe it or not, no. And neither is anyone outside of Edmonton. The only thing Canadians hate more than other Canadian teams is being lectured that we should cheer for other Canadian teams.
Gentille: All Canadians know each other, actually. I feel like Boston Pizza almost stuck the landing here, too, which definitely makes it worse. They could’ve hit us with a record scratch and shown the Canucks fan knocking the Oilers fan’s plate off the bar, or cut to Luke Gazdic calling people from Vancouver losers. Something true to life.
McIndoe: Right? They caught a little piece of it. The guy wiping off his glass that the Toronto guy touched was pretty funny. But if you’re going to do it, lean in. Have the Montreal fan be an old guy who keeps annoying everyone with boring stories. Have the Ottawa guy be an annoying kid brother who keeps trying to butt into conversations but nobody else remembers he’s there. Have the Vancouver fan do something funny, at which point everyone else says “Wow, you guys are a riot”. Go big!
Gentille: “Come to Boston Pizza and get into a fight. Just close out your tab beforehand.”
McIndoe: I’d love to know what the pitch meeting was like for this one. “OK, so first we remind Canadian hockey fans that all their teams keep losing, and how sad that makes them. Then we insinuate that it’s their fault because they’re doing fandom wrong. Then we take it home by telling them to do the one thing that absolutely no Canadian hockey fan would ever do. Guys, this is brilliant, we’re going to make so many loyal new customers.”
Gentille: It’s the sort of thing you only see from media companies or, like, sports bars. “How can we keep peoples’ attention and take more of their money once their team is eliminated? Why, gaslight them into thinking that they actually like the Winnipeg Jets, of course.”
McIndoe: Anyway, if the Oilers win the Cup in two weeks, nobody from Canada will be happy about it and this commercial is the reason why. OK, I think that brings this year’s post to a close, thanks for reading everyone!
Gentille: *text message chime*
McIndoe: (deep sigh) Fine. Here I go.
Gentille: Gotta watch it three times in succession for the full experience.
McIndoe: This… might be even worse than I thought it would be?
Gentille: That’s a swerve. I was expecting you to be relatively OK with it — like I was during the NCAA Tournament, when I saw it the first 500 times.
McIndoe: I guess I was expecting some sort of Tara Tara-style ear worm. Instead, this is somehow trying way too hard and also nowhere near hard enough.
Gentille: I’ve thought about it a lot, and this is where I’ve landed. Kind of in a similar spot to the Boston Pizza ad, actually. It starts out … kind of OK? Like, you can track where it’s going. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren initially hit all their marks. They just couldn’t land the plane. If those guys go at 75 percent instead of 15, really sell the performance and make me believe that they know a Christina Aguilera song from 25 years ago, the conversation is completely different.
McIndoe: I feel like they spent hours doing multiple takes, trying different things, just a full day or experimenting. And then at the end, when everyone was tired and just wanted to go home, they squeezed in one more against everyone’s will, only to realize that they’d accidentally recorded over everything else and they were stuck using that one.
Gentille: Carbon monoxide poisoning from the bus fumes cannot be discounted.
McIndoe: I just rewatched it, because I thought it was weird that they didn’t have any background music come in. But they do. It’s just… not the music from the song. It’s just vague sound. Again, pick a lane guys!
Gentille: It’s because they’re singing in a different time signature than the actual song. They turned it into a dirge. Put it on loop and you could use it in a sleep app.
McIndoe: How many times a night did you say this airs?
Gentille: In the first couple rounds, probably six per game. Not kidding. And now, I have a question for you.
McIndoe: Shoot.
Gentille: What does a pro want?
McIndoe: (in a level of enthusiasm that barely registers on scientific instruments): What a pro needs.
(Photo: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)
