Top 10 Commercials Starring Toronto Maple Leafs Players

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a great marketing team.

Being a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs comes with some lucrative sponsorship opportunities.

Insurance companies, hockey gear manufacturers, milk and even McDonald’s all want a taste of the marketing push that being associated with one of the most recognizable brands in the sport, or sports in general, can bring.

For the players, it’s a great way for them to offset the losses they incur due to escrow, especially for those with really low cap hits (one of the many reasons why free agents can and should sign here for cheap (wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I’m saying?)

Using the power of YouTube, I’ve tracked down what I believe to be the ten best commercials starring Toronto Maple Leafs players, at least, of the ones that are readily available on video-sharing platforms.

10. Sonnet Insurance (Various)

To kick us off, we have these two ads for Sonnet Insurance starring Doug Gilmour, William Nylander, Morgan Rielly, Zach Hyman, and even Frederik Gauthier.

A fun pair of tongue-in-cheek pokes at how hockey has changed so much about game preparation, player nutrition, and equipment in the last 20 years or so.

Side note: those meatballs that the Legends are digging into in the first video look so good.

9 & 8. Aviva (Frederik Andersen)

Taking the next two slots on our list are these couple of pretty funny commercials staring the Great Dane himself, Freddie Andersen.

The ads speak for themselves, when you want the best protection, go for Fred… unless it’s October.

7. Intact Insurance (Mitch Marner)

Rounding out our trio of insurance advertisements is the series of commercials for Intact starring Mitch Marner, and featuring a cameo appearance from former teammate Matt Martin.

Some parts of this ad fall flat, like the Shakespearean actor, but for Martin’s cameo, and the segment with the kid and the juice box alone, gold star.

6. Casper (John Tavares)

An effective ad that plays on the seriousness of the Leafs’ current captain. In it, he literally moves into the arena, to the ire of a Zamboni driver named Dave… wait, that sounds familiar.

Ayres jokes aside, most of the sponsorship appearances Tavares has appeared in since his arrival play on his outward seriousness, single-minded focus on the game, or the infamous pajama photo from when he was a kid.

I do want to give an honorable mention to the one commercial that doesn’t utilize any of the Tavares tropes. Anyone who’s watched Hockey Night In Canada has seen it a million and one times by now, and though we might sick of seeing it over and over, you can’t deny that it’s well-made.

5. McDonald’s (Mats Sundin)

We go from the current Toronto Maple Leafs captain to the last great captain, Mats Sundin co-starring in an ad for McDonald’s with The Great One himself, Wayne Gretzky.

I remember seeing this a few times when I was a kid, and it’s just as fun now as I remember, a couple of the greatest players of all time challenging each other to increasingly ridiculous shots.

Somebody should get on remaking this with modern greats like Crosby, McDavid, Mackinnon and Matthews, that’d be amazing.

4. Bauer (Auston Matthews)

I guess in a way, this is a modernized version of the Sundin McDonald’s ad, although this time it’s a commercial for a Bauer stick co-starring Auston Matthews and Jonathan Toews, who completely wreck the “set” of a commercial shoot with trick shot challenges.

I give this the slight leg up on the Sundin one because, although it’s much more grounded in reality, it has an unscripted feel of just some guys having fun and I really admire that approach. Anything that makes the players look less like the soulless robots the mainstream media would have you believe they are.