The 2025-26 season did not go the way many fans expected, with the Toronto Maple Leafs missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in 10 years.
The Leafs are one game away from leaving the rink and heading to the links, and one golf resort is already making a marketing mockery of their misery.
A Maple Leafs fan walks by a Fox Harb’r Golf Resort ad in Union Station before Monday’s home game against the Dallas Stars. (Fox Harb’r Golf Resort)
On Monday, before the team’s final home game against the Dallas Stars, Nova Scotia’s Fox Harb’r Golf Resort took over digital advertising boards at Toronto’s Union Station and throughout the downtown PATH walkways, using the space to take a subtle jab at Leafs fans suddenly having a two-month vacancy.
The golf course shared beautiful imagery of its coastal championship course on each of them along with cheeky headlines like “Don’t worry, we have 18 cups waiting for you here,” and “A short season just means more time for the short game.”
The golf course says there was no ill will behind its gut-punching marketing strategy targeting Leafs fans.
Pedestrians walk past a Toronto Maple Leafs targeted ad in Union Station. (Fox Harb’r Golf Resort)
“This is just your East Coast family saying: come home for a few days,” Fox Harb’r president Kevin Toth told blogTO. “We’ll feed you, we’ll get you on the course, and we won’t talk about the playoffs unless you want to.”
In addition to the six digital ads, the golf course also created a Maple Leafs-themed resort package on its website called the “Rink to the Links Escape,” which comes loaded with an “Early Exit Experience” dinner and a signature craft cocktail called “The Short Season.”
Subtle jab or not, it’s a genius strategy to make light of a hockey season that’s been well below par.
Lead photo by
Nick Turchiaro/Imagn Images