How DoorDash and BHLA staged a family night in on an NHL ice rink

DoorDash’s NHL campaign ‘What’s For Hockey’, created by Broken Heart Love Affair (BHLA), is aimed less at die-hard fans than at everyone else in the room who simply likes an excuse to get together over a takeaway.

One early idea drew on the Canadian joke that every child arrives in the world already holding a stick and wearing skates. It followed a boy in a hockey-obsessed country who had no interest in the game until he met a girl who felt the same. That treatment was dropped, but its thinking survived.

The film

The ad begins with an ordinary evening at home. A girl walks in, tosses her coat aside and collapses on the sofa, followed by her brother and the family Yorkie. “What’s for hockey?” she asks. “Pizza,” comes the reply.

As the music starts, the camera pulls back to show that the rug, lamps and bookcases are all positioned on a hockey rink. Players and skating Dashers, in full uniform with delivery bags on their backs, race around the furniture. Further back are more families on more rugs, on sofas or around kitchen tables, including a man calmly eating ramen with chopsticks.

A player skids to a stop just short of the dog, spraying him with ice, then gently lifts him back on to the couch. Edmonton Oilers player Evan Bouchard hurtles past and lands on a glass coffee table, which smashes. A puck passes inches over the head of a sleeping man, and Toronto Maple Leafs player Max Domi makes a cameo. At the end, a girl lying on the carpet repeats the question and a passing player shouts “DoorDash.”

An open brief

DoorDash has no agency of record, handling much of its work internally and taking projects to different agencies as it chooses. It had liked ‘Bring It In’, which BHLA produced as part of its women’s sports leagues activity. When it was named the NHL’s Official On-Demand Delivery and Pick Up Partner in both Canada and the US, it turned to BHLA again.

Creative directors Matthew McDonald and Layton Wu had joined BHLA only in May. They said the brief was very open. Rather than hardcore fans, it centred on families, relaxed meals and time spent together, with the match treated as a reason to socialise.

That struck a chord with them personally: neither is a big sports fan, but both enjoy watching games with friends. With food and ordering able to feature around a match in so many ways, they had a lot of freedom.

Among the treatments considered were the boy who did not care for hockey and a restaurant set up on the ice. “Kudos to our client for pushing us to put families at the centre,” said McDonald, who says that pressure made the work sharper. Both say the process was highly collaborative.

The strapline was a unanimous choice. BHLA pinned several options on the wall for presentation day. “As soon as the client walked in, she went straight over to ‘What’s For Hockey,’” said McDonald. “Then everyone gravitated round it, nodding. It was just obvious that was the line.”

Living rooms on the ice

Executive producer Erica Metcalfe drew on her extensive contacts to find a production company and director. With visual effects central to the film, they needed a director with a strong VFX track record, which led them to Denim and its director Jack Driscoll. The two creative directors already knew the production company from earlier work and were confident it could manage the demanding post-production.

The shoot took place on a vast Olympic-sized hockey rink in Montreal, where every living room was built on the ice. The VFX team and shoot crew worked together for more than three days.

Filming on the first day started at 4am, leaving just three hours before a skating championship needed the rink. It was midsummer, so everyone had to pack winter clothes. “You’re spending like days and days in an ice box, literally,” said Wu. The families look relaxed and cosy on screen, he said, “But once the camera cut, they’re bundled up and kind of shivering a little bit.” Over the following days the ice lost its crispness and became tougher to skate on, though no one grumbled.

Casting was carried out in Toronto, and the campaign needed to work in both English and French. Students from McGill University appeared as the hockey players in professional kit, with figure skaters playing the Dashers. Five or six families appear on the ice, each with a different order covering pizza, kebabs, ramen and noodles. The Yorkshire Terrier is an experienced screen performer, and its rescue was filmed in two separate shots.

Real, not AI

The glass coffee table was real glass. Sugar glass was tested first but did not shatter convincingly, so the team switched to the real thing and needed three takes. The puck flying over the sleeping man was computer-generated, while the goalie catching it behind him was filmed for real.

Almost everything on screen was captured in camera or created in CGI. The single exception arrived late on, when the team noticed an area of ice with little going on. Copying existing footage looked too obviously duplicated, so one AI-generated element was added to fill the gap.

Asked why AI was not used more widely, the answer was control. Each puck needed the official NHL shield, and AI-generated pucks tend to change shape and wander, which is also why the net was made in CGI. Uniforms were another factor. Because the deal is with the league rather than one team, the NHL wanted equal representation for all seven Canadian clubs. Tracking that through filming, editing and VFX demanded close attention, and getting dozens of people positioned precisely is still difficult with AI.

Ready for the season

‘What’s For Hockey’ launched on 29 September to coincide with the opening of the 2026-27 season. It is running across TV, streaming, digital video, audio, display, social and out-of-home, with cinema to follow. DoorDash is also the presenting sponsor of national Wednesday night NHL games and Stanley Cup Playoff games shown on Prime Video in Canada.

McDonald, who landed the project soon after joining BHLA, credits the production partners. “They are really the ones who made everything happen,” he said. “We just wrote a script and said, can we do this?”

Driscoll said: “The comedy came from having highly skilled hockey players flying around at breakneck speed, while real Canadians sat at home, completely oblivious to the world unfolding around them.”

Wu added: “That’s how it always starts. You have this little script that’s a little insane… and you’re just like, I think it’ll work.”

On the client side, credits include Jennifer Richardi, global head of brand and creative at DoorDash, and executive creative director Kirsten Rutherford. At BHLA, Rachelle Claveau is president, Carlos Moreno chief creative officer and Kristy Pleckaitis chief strategy officer. Editorial was by Nimiopere, post-production and VFX by Feather, and music and sound by Squeak E Clean and SndWrx.