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Brock Boeser cruelly critiques Charlie McAvoy’s shot in promotional video

With his combination of elite skill and Prince Charming looks, Brock Boeser should get plenty of endorsement deals throughout his career.
Brock Boeser holds up a s'melt sign.

With his combination of elite skill and Prince Charming looks, Brock Boeser should get plenty of endorsement deals throughout his career. In fact, it’s surprising that a hair product company hasn’t tagged him for a commercial yet with his flowing golden locks.

Instead, Jake Virtanen did a deal with Head & Shoulders with a promotional video on his Instagram. Boeser had a laugh at Virtanen’s expense in the comments of that video, which might not endear him to Head & Shoulders.

As for Boeser himself, he appears to be keeping a low profile in terms of marketing. He appears to have just one endorsement deal and it’s a common one among hockey players: a gear deal with CCM.

You would think a promotional video with Boeser would feature his biggest asset — his shot — but that came later. Instead, CCM went an unconventional route. Instead of Boeser using his shot, he used his knowledge of shooting to judge someone else: Charlie McAvoy.

The results? Actually pretty funny.


Boeser gets a desk and office chair so he can go to work assessing McAvoy’s shot, but I take issue with the placement of the desk and chair. If Boeser’s going to set up office anywhere on the ice, it’s not going to be the right faceoff circle; it obviously should be the left faceoff circle. I mean, seriously.

Boeser isn’t the most dynamic speaker, so having him render his judgements in meme-able sign form is a smart choice. Of course, some of his judgements might require translation for an older audience.

“Pretender” isn’t difficult to parse, of course, as it’s the converse to “contender.” You might run into a little more difficulty when it comes to “s’melt.”

The hockey slang that presumably refers to would be “smelt,” as in a small fish. In hockey terms, it often refers to a rookie, particularly one that might think he’s a big fish, but has really just been a small fish in a small pond.

The term has been further popularized in the hockey-adjacent Canadian comedy Letterkenny, where it’s pronounced “schmelt,” which might explain the extraneous apostrophe in Boeser’s sign.

Boeser gets a little more positive as things progress, and gives McAvoy a positive assessment with his next sign: “sniz.” That would be short for “snizzipe,” which is just a Snoop Dogg’ed version of “snipe.”

Finally, Boeser drops the slogan of the campaign — “gamechanger” — in his final judgement, which seems really forced after the slang terms he just threw at McAvoy. Of course, Boeser’s coda at the end of the video kind of undoes his uplifting “gamechanger” sign: “The fact it took him eight shots, I’m laughing over here!”

It was Boeser’s turn to shoot in part two, with McAvoy providing the judgement. Let’s just say that McAvoy’s snipes at Boeser in the sequel are about as weak as his snipes with his stick.

I think it’s fair to declare Boeser the winner here.