The beginning of a bizarre friendship

Canadian calcio fans will notice a curious crossover this weekend.

Saturday, while AC Milan hosts Cremonese on the first matchday of the Serie A season (1:45 p.m., FuboTV), some familiar faces will appear in the San Siro stands.

Toronto Maple Leafs winger William Nylander will be in attendance, as will Carolina Hurricanes centre Sebastian Aho, defenceman Miro Heiskanen of the Dallas Stars and 23 other NHL players.

No, they haven’t organized a Lombardian stag party, and they’re not starring in a new season of The White Lotus.

They’re in Milan to promote the new Content Collaboration Partnership between the NHL and Serie A — an idea sparked by a viral Instagram post that showed Mika Zibanejad of the New York Rangers exchanging jerseys with Italian World Cup winners Andrea Pirlo and Marco Materazzi back in March.

Prior to kickoff they’ll tour Inter Milan’s training facility, and they’ll do some more sweater-swapping with some to-be-named “legends” of the Rossoneri and Nerazzurri.

Beyond that, it’s all a bit mysterious. Serie A’s New York office has stated the partnership will not be an influencer-fuelled social media stunt, which means that’s almost certainly what it will be.

If it’s easy to be cynical about a buzzwordy enterprise that’s tailor-made for AI, it’s because the relationship seems so totally random.

There is, however, an obvious connecting point in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

For the first time since 2014, NHLers will compete at the Games — and hobnobbing with two of world football’s better-known clubs can only increase the hockey tournament’s visibility.

As host, Italy will also be icing a team and — while it won’t challenge the established powers — there’s a positive feeling in the group after winning promotion to the top tier of the World Championship in May. Its captain is Thomas Larkin, a former fifth-round pick of the Columbus Blue Jackets who grew up near Milan.

In the short term, it’s hockey that stands to gain from the football link-up. And beyond its Olympics promotion, the NHL will be keen to boost its numbers on DAZN, which streams the league in Italy and throughout Europe.

Serie A, meanwhile, is playing the long game.

Despite the more than 17 million Americans of Italian descent (Canada’s 2021 census counted about 1.5 million people of Italian heritage in this country), Serie A has struggled to break through in the United States.

A 2023 report by World Soccer Talk — updated in 2024 — ranked it seventh in U.S. viewership, behind the top flights of England, Mexico, Spain and Germany, as well as Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League.

It is unclear how they expect hockey, which remains a niche sport in many U.S. markets, to help its numbers. A Serie A press release revealed the league will shadow the NHL’s International Broadcaster Summit, presumably for insight into global marketing and streaming strategies.

Storytelling — something it feels the NHL does well — is also a growth area.

Serie A has also stated that Italian football and elite-level hockey “are increasingly speaking the same language,” and that the collaboration is a chance to unite “two sporting passions.”

Again, it’s not entirely clear what that actually means.

As of Friday, neither AC Milan nor Inter had even mentioned the NHL partnership on any platform, in either Italian or English. Understandably, both clubs have been concentrating on pre-match preparations (Inter faces Torino on Monday, 1:45 p.m., FuboTV), and with the transfer window still open they’re making last-minute roster moves as well.

Transfers are also the top stories at Italy’s major media companies, and they’re followed by previews of the upcoming U.S. Open, where Jannik Sinner is looking to defend his tennis title.

Assuming the Milan clubs remember to fetch the hockey players from their hotel, it’s hard to see a “synergy,” as NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly likes to say, beyond one or two Instagram posts, and maybe a couple more in the run-up to the Olympics.

This whole thing, don’t forget, was born from that Zibanejad-Pirlo-Materazzi photo. People liked it. They also like photos of athletes with puppies.

But maybe they’re onto something. Maybe Serie A can benefit from the “passion” of hockey’s fanbase, and maybe the NHL can add Northern Italy to its growing Central European footprint.

The proof will be in the number of fans they excite in their content crossover. That’s another growth area, because enthusiasm for…whatever this is…is currently at zero.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

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