THE BELFAST GIANTS are currently top of Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League.
But they’ve taken time out from their schedule to record this version of Mariah Carey’s modern festive classic All I Want for Christmas Is You.
General manager Todd Kelman told The Score this morning that the idea sprung from a desire to boost the club’s attendances over the coming weeks.
“Basically, we wanted to have a bit of fun with the guys and at the same time promote the games at Christmas,” he said, “We are in first place, so we figured why not because no one can say we should have been practicing on the ice instead of learning to dance.”
I have had this idea in my head for a few years now, I was just waiting for a fun enough team that would be willing to do it.
Myself and Deborah Maguire, who is a professional choreographer and also volunteers on game night with the Giants, sat down and thought of how to go about getting 20 pro hockey players to lip sync to this song and then we brought them in.
She spent a couple of hours teaching them the moves before we brought in the rest of crew to film the sequences.
It was a sneaky way to build team morale because the guys all absolutely loved it.
They are a fun group of guys and they obviously don’t mind making fun of themselves.
And Kelman – known as ‘Killer’ to fans in Belfast – says he had no problem getting his bruisers into fancy dress, particularly Mike Hoffman.
Hoff was there for rehearsal and he said to me ‘I’ve got an elf costume at home if you want me to go get it. I said ‘Of course we want you to go get it, I can’t beleive you even had to ask.’
When we asked him why he had an Elf costume, he said ’I'm 6’5″, when I see an elf costume that fits me, I buy that Elf costume, because you know you are going to need it sometime.”
The general manager says that the Giants’ bit of fun has earned them a lot of attention – right around the globe.
“We have a game plan every match at the Giants that we are going to feed you so much fun at our games that if you leave the game without a smile on your face, we haven’t done our job,” he says.
“Sure the guys take the games seriously, but all of us that surround them and have to create the atmosphere on game night take our job of creating the best entertainment we possibly can very seriously.
“These guys are pro athletes, but you can still have a bit of fun especially at Christmas. After all, no matter how serious you take your sports, its still entertainment and its still a game. People need a bit of a laugh these days and that’s what we have given them.
It’s not often the players can give something back to the fans, so we thought let’s make a fun Christmas video for our fans to make them laugh and promote our games at the same time. It obviously worked!
We loaded it up for Monday morning and since then it has gone crazy. An ice hockey fan website voted it as the Best Hockey Music Video of all time.
Mariah Carey tweeted about it on Monday night after seeing it. It ‘s absolutely crazy. We have been on Sky Sports News, ESPN in North America and various TV radio shows around the world.
