It’s a hat trick: 3 similarities between professional ice hockey and science comms

Insights gleaned from watching the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs.

The 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs is an exciting time of year for hockey fans. For about two months, the National Hockey League’s top 16 teams face off. Their ultimate goal? To win the oldest professional sports trophy in North America.

As an ice hockey fan – and passionate amateur player – I’ve been tuning in to this year’s playoffs with excitement and emotion. When the on-ice action of the first few games ended, I found myself thinking about something a little unexpected: the connections between professional ice hockey and science comms.

In this article, I present three similarities – a hat trick, if you will – that stood out to me.

1. The opportunity to educate and engage.

I’ve heard from outsiders that hockey can be a difficult sport to get into as a fan. From the fast pace to unique rules, there’s a lot to pay attention to. Likewise, communicating science can also pose an uphill battle. To me, the connection here is in the opportunity to educate and engage.

In hockey, commentators, intermission hosts, and announcers are often resident experts and former pro players. For example, at opening night of the 2025 playoffs, Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest players of all time, was part of the intermission host lineup. He and colleagues provided insights and explained what was happening in the game. They also added context, naming strategies, plays, decisions, and opportunities.

The best hosts also weave in their personal style, some extra flavor and fun, maybe offering statistics about players and coaches, team history facts, insights about what they would do during a particular play, or even trivia. This helps to engage the audience and keep them interested in the game and the sport overall.

It’s the same for science comms. Whether you’re writing an article about new research, recording a podcast with an expert, or producing a video showcasing an exciting discovery, you’ll want to explain the science. Educate your audience by breaking it down, adding visuals or examples, telling them why it’s important. There’s also an opportunity to engage the audience with personal stories, connections to everyday issues and news, puns and creative storytelling. All of this helps people understand and connect with science on a deeper level.

2. Teamwork and collaboration are fundamental.

Hockey is the only sport to announce two assists for each goal scored. So, they acknowledge the pass that led to the goal and the pass that led to the pass. Feels a little extra? Well, it actually illustrates the complexity of making a play in hockey. It takes a setup; teamwork and collaboration are fundamental.

I think science is inherently a team sport too, which naturally plays a role in science comms. Scientists build upon past research to understand our world better. Across disciplines, experts forge local and global partnerships on research projects, which I find remarkable.

Take the Important Shark and Ray Areas project, for example, which has brought together over 700 scientists and experts globally to map the world’s oceans to protect sharks. They announce and host workshops across 13 regions to understand specific conservation needs in those geographic areas. The collaboration extends to local organizations and governmental units to form a holistic picture of shark behavior.

It’s no small feat to map the world’s oceans to protect sharks. An incredible amount of data is needed to understand where various shark species are, what they do in an area, and what is required to protect them. So, teamwork and collaboration are fundamental to making a difference – just like scoring a goal in hockey. When it comes to science comms, it’s critical to announce the “assists” and acknowledge partners involved in such monumental and critical efforts. This comes in the form of citing sources, crediting research coauthors and project partners, and thanking funders as appropriate.

3. The weird and the wonderful make it special.

Hockey comes with its own special variety of weird and wonderful traditions. One prime example is what the fans in the stands do when a player scores three goals in one game, known as a hat trick. Since the 1950s, fans have thrown their hats onto the ice to celebrate the achievement.

For some, hats just aren’t the ammo of choice – like how dead octopuses are thrown onto the ice at Detroit Red Wings games. This started during the 1952 Stanley Cup Playoffs because the octopus’ eight legs symbolized the number of wins the team needed to bring home the hardware. This tradition became so prevalent that the team embraced a purple octopus, named Al, as its unofficial mascot!

And that’s just one example. As a nod to Detroit’s octopus-throwing, fans in Nashville started hoisting dead catfish onto the ice at Predators games. In the 1990s, a Florida Panther player killed a rat with his stick in the locker room before the game. He went on to score a hat trick in that game and rubber rats became the new ritual for the team.

There are a few other honorable mentions of weird and wonderful hockey traditions that I’ve seen on display in this year’s playoffs. The Dallas Stars have otter people – fans who wear masks to look like otters – paying homage to the team’s goalie, Jake Oettinger. Fans of the Winnipeg Jets conduct a white out during home playoff games and they go all out. Donning everything from bleached wigs and face paint to white KFC buckets on their heads.

Like hockey’s traditions, science is weird and wonderful and that’s what makes it special. Science headlines just from the past few weeks are about leaf geometry, understanding how life started on Earth, using butterfly wings for cancer research, and proving that the color purple is but a “pigment of our imagination.” Science comms is the mechanism to show off just how strange, fun, amazing, and inspiring science is. It’s an honor to take on science comms work when you think about it that way!