The good, the bad, and ugly from the NHL schedule releases across the league

As a professional sports team in 2023, you have two options when it comes to announcing your schedule for the upcoming season. You can send it out in calendar format and let your fans peruse the dates and your opponents at their leisure.

Or you can have some fun.

Under the latter category, please take a look at the Los Angeles Kings and Ottawa Senators.

The Kings, for instance, wrote a script and shot a small movie, which is probably no surprise for an Los Angeles-based team. The hero in this film is their mascot, Bailey, who goes about its day, while hints of the season's home-date opposition subtly appear around him.

Oilers fans will take note of the "2-Man Show" slight made with respect to Edmonton's visits to the Staples Center on Dec. 30 and Feb. 10.

The Senators, meanwhile, went with some simple fun, having some children from the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario draw up images representing the opponents (there are clearly some future impressionists in the nation's capital) and then having forward Shane Pinto and his dad, Frank, try and guess at what they were. The emphasis here is definitely on try.

The highlight may have been both claiming victory for being the first to come up with the correct answer based on a city's famous dish. (Sorry, Frank, but the video does not lie.)

Then there are the Carolina Hurricanes, who employed some high school art class tactics when putting together a video for their Saturday home games. At least everyone ate well during that meeting. (Bet you can't guess which team the chicken wings represent!)

Still, that was better than the Predators' effort, which looked more like it was made by a 1980s A/V teacher for his kid's hockey team.

At least the Nashville social-medial department can say they tried. The New York Rangers, by comparison, did not, and fell into the trap of asking hockey players to be actors, which never goes well.