Selling hockey on DVD in Canada should be as much of a sure thing as betting against the Leafs winning a Stanley Cup in our lifetimes, but the relative success of three hockey titles released last month had more to do with content and marketing strategies than love of the game.

The Tournament, a very funny mockumentary series produced by Adjacent 2 Entertainment (partly owned by Just For Laughs founder Gilbert Rozon) and set in the world of minor hockey, aired on the CBC over two seasons and then more recently on the Outdoor Life Network in the U.S. It was released without much fanfare in a two-disc edition Nov. 7 with all 16 eps.

Distributed through Video Service Corp., the discs didn’t crack the DVD Top 40 despite an ambitious marketing plan for the show.

‘I think our target demo was really wide, because almost everyone Canadian has an attachment to hockey,’ says Leisa Lee, director of communications for JFL. ‘But we concentrated on hockey parents and adults who had lived through the minor league hockey system – men and women 18 to 55. We specifically did a grassroots campaign in our first year to reach people who had kids playing in the minor league system, so we went after hockey fans in minor league arenas, at sports radio and in hockey publications.’

Ironically, parents who have kids in hockey have very little time to watch shows about hockey other than Hockey Night in Canada – which may have been part of the rub.

Hockey: A People’s History, CBC’s excellent doc series which ran to a disappointing average 396,000 viewers for its 10-episode run in the fall, debuted on DVD Oct. 23 through Warner Home Video. Prominent shelf space in major retail outlets helped it reach number 28 on the Nielsen VideoScan chart for the week ending Nov. 12.

Airing back-to-back episodes every Sunday during the season – as opposed to mostly ahead of the NHL campaign, as was the case – might have given viewers more time to put hockey back in their schedules. An increased viewership in turn would have given the DVD release some brand identity and more incentive for consumers to invest in a pricey box set.

Don Cherry has no such issues. The man was named one of the Top Ten Greatest Canadians in CBC’s 2004 nationwide poll. His annual release of the best goals, scraps, hits, saves, etc. (which used to be called Rock’em Sock’em) has traditionally sold around 75,000 units, moving more than two million in total since its first release in 1989.

The most recent installement, Don Cherry: Volume 18, streeted on Nov. 14 from kaBOOM! Entertainment, which took over distribution rights from Molstar, landing at number five on the Nielsen VideoScan charts for the week ending Nov. 19, ahead of Mission: Impossible III. It has stayed in the Top 20 for a month.

‘It’s a perennial favorite,’ says Peter Crighton, director of marketing for kaBOOM!, which will also rerelease Volumes 10 through 17 on DVD Jan. 9.

‘Don talks about it on his radio show and on Coach’s Corner. And CBC was a great partner this year as far as airing TV spots [during HNIC] and advertising it through CBC Radio. So our pitch to our customers in retail was that there’ll be a huge presence of Don through traditional advertising, as well as through grassroots PR.’

Crighton took advantage of Cherry’s notoriety in Canada through promotional tie-ins, which he says were incredibly well attended.

‘I’m not exaggerating when I say that probably nine out of 10 people were women who were buying it as a present for their boyfriends, husbands, sons or grandchildren,’ he recalls.

‘People told me, ‘Every year for Christmas my mom buys me the Don Cherry video and we watch it on Christmas Day.”

Also…

* Guy Maddin’s international Emmy winner Dracula: Pages from A Virgin’s Diary, and the gay-themed period piece Proteus from director John Greyson will street on Jan. 9 from Domino Films.

* Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm announced recently that Bon Cop, Bad Cop’s 230,000 shipped units in December eclipsed the previous DVD record of 150,000 set by Séraphin: Un homme et son péché, another AAV title, in 2005.

* More than 100 hours of Partners in Motion programming will now be available on DVD through Amazon.com subsidiary CustomFlix Labs. The deal includes series such as Disasters of the Century and episodes from Crime Hunters, Beyond Medicine and others.