David, Kiro; ready for your close up, Mr. Ambassador?
For this year's bracket challenge winner, who requested something like Crosby and Mackinnon's Tim Hortons commercials, but with David and Kiro instead.
But of course, because this is David, instead you get a lot of setup as to how exactly we got into this particular scenario. (Kiro to meddle later)
David has never done many endorsement deals. It isn’t that they weren’t offered to him, especially at the beginning of his career — the Islanders may not be the most popular team in New York, but they were still, in Dave’s words, ‘in New fucking York. Yeah, okay, they’re on Long Island. Semantics, David, the market’s the market.’
It wasn’t semantics, not really — the Rangers were New York’s team, then and now, the Islanders relegated to some distant second, New York’s team the way that the Ottawa Senators were Ontario’s, that San Jose was California's.
Still, he had offers. A lot of them. But when he was younger David wanted to focus on hockey and only hockey, worried any distractions would halt his development. His job was to play hockey, not to pretend to be excited about some product he’d never heard of before they called him.
And, frankly, the media David deals with, and the filming he already has to endure for contractual reasons — YouTube videos for his team, soundbites for the TV networks, media day for the league — means that David has no illusions about his acting ability.
So, for the most part, David’s ignored the offers. The money offered is sometimes good, occasionally very good, but he already makes more money than he can spend.
Well, he could easily spend it, but it’s certainly more money than he could responsibly spend, particularly knowing that, sooner rather than later, his career will have to end.
It’s that particular thought, and the accompanying awareness that his endorsement value is only going to decline from this point forward, that has David playing closer attention than usual when Dave mentions that one of the team’s sponsors is interested in filming a TV spot with him.
That isn’t unusual — Dave mentions them often, but they’re more an aside that David’s welcome to ignore. Dave is well aware that David has little interest, but he still conveys the message, mostly, he says, because he gets paid for them too — not as much, obviously, but he does receive a portion of David’s earnings.
To date, David’s only taken him up on one offer. Leapt on it, even though the compensation was negligible compared to other offers, let alone compared to what he made on the ice, but that was because it was Bauer, offering him the chance to, in effect, advertise a stick designed to his specifications. The filming wasn’t too bad either, since it mostly involved him stickhandling for take after take, which wasn’t all that different from practice. Even those have cameras sometimes.
He still uses the stick to this day. It isn’t the only one uses, or even the one he uses most often — it’s a little too fragile, and David grew tired of having to race back to the bench when it snapped yet again, though he did draw more penalties with it — but it’s excellent for the power play.
“It’s a very generous offer,” Dave says. “They have a ‘vision’, they said, and they’re willing to pay a little more to get you specifically.”
“What do you mean?” David asks.
“Let them tell you,” Dave says. “It’s actually a pretty decent idea.”
Dave wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it, and between the money, and David’s curiosity, it’s enough reason to agree to meet with someone from the sponsor. ‘Just a coffee’, they said, but David prepares for — and receives — a pitch instead.
Apparently it’s all Kiro’s fault. The representative doesn’t put it like that, of course, but he does mention that the idea came after someone on their marketing team watched the red carpet interview from the Awards the year David won the Art Ross.
David isn’t sure why that interview’s still online, let alone why anyone would watch it, but it is, and they have, and their marketing team thinks, being that David is from the Canadian capital, plays in Washington, and Kiro joked about him being the Canadian Ambassador to Russia, it would be funny for David to play an ambassador.
“A hockey ambassador,” he says. “You know?”
“I have no experience with diplomacy,” David says. “Or acting, really.”
He’s sure he’d be terrible at it. He’s terrible even at playing himself, according almost every bit of feedback he’s received on NHL media day, and he can't see playing a role going any better.
“You don’t even really need to act,” the sponsor says. “We’re going for diplomatic, you know? Stern but polite. That’s kind of your vibe anyway, isn’t it? We figured that was why Volkov said it.”
“Is that why?” David asks. He genuinely thought Kiro had been joking that David earned honourary Russian status after spending the entire summer with him, Oleg, and Slava, but sometimes Kiro’s jokes can go over his head.
That gets a laugh, and he’s not sure why, but he’s stopped trying to understand at this point, unless it’s someone whose opinion that matters to him, someone he cares about.
“Well,” David says, when time’s up. He still has half his tea, but it’s in a to-go cup, and he thinks he’s heard enough. “I’ll think about it.”
He doesn’t anticipate needing to spend a lot of time on that. The money really is good, but he really does have no shortage of it, and he doesn’t think he’d like to earn money by humiliating himself.
His mistake was mentioning it to Kiro. He should have known Kiro would never let him turn it down.
