NHL, NBC have awesome Willy Wonka gimmick for Stanley Cup Playoffs

Who among us hasn’t opened up a candy bar and, for a second, hoped there was a Golden Ticket inside, earning you the right to tour a mysterious candy factory and meet your demise in way that shames your various character flaws?

Well, the Golden Ticket may be confined to a classic Roald Dahl novel, a marvelous Gene Wilder movie and whatever the hell Johnny Depp was doing  … but that doesn’t mean the NHL and NBC can’t create some Willy Wonka magic of their own.

Everyone: “I’ve got a/sil-ver ticket!”

Here’s the deal: NBC and the NHL are handing out 32,768 “Lord Stanley’s Cup Diddly-Umptious Bracket Bar” chocolate bars. “What an odd number!” you might say; well, that’s the number of different combinations in the Stanley Cup bracket this season. So it’s by design.

From NBC:

Each of the chocolate bars features an imprint of a blank Stanley Cup Playoffs bracket, and is packaged in a unique wrapper which includes one of 32,768 different bracket combinations. At the conclusion of the Stanley Cup Final, one lucky winner will possess the perfect bracket and will win a trip to the 2016 NHL All-Star Weekend, and the opportunity to spend time with the Stanley Cup.

The All-Star Game is in Nashville next season.

Nashville is awesome.

Ah, but that’s not all. Please recall the aforementioned silver ticket:

In addition, four fans who receive chocolate bars featuring a silver ticket will win a trip to Game 3 of this year’s Stanley Cup Final and the opportunity to spend time with the Stanley Cup. 

(They really need to define “spend some time with the Stanley Cup” because we’re frankly worried what’ll happen if a Leafs fan wins this thing.)

How does one get his or her hands on these chocolate bars? Well those bastards in the media (re: us) will be given boxes, along with celebrity fans and “social influencers” which we assume means Steve Dangle. But that’s not all:

Each playoff team will also receive their own box of “Lord Stanley’s Cup Diddly-Umptious Bracket Bar” chocolate bars. The vast majority of bars will be given out to hockey fans in each of the 16 cities which have a team playing in the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Fans can tune into local sports radio stations to find out specific locations to pick up a bar, available on a first-come first-served basis.

“Lord Stanley’s Cup Diddly-Umptious Bracket Bars” will also be available at the flagship NHL Store in New York City, in NHL Team Stores, and in popular hockey bars in local markets with teams competing in the Playoffs.

If you’re lucky enough to find one of these things, head to bracketbar.nbcsports.com to register your bracket.

For all the weird things NBC does to promote the NHL – we’re still not over the “rink water ice treats” – this sounds pretty awesome. Until, of course, you get to Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, meet the Stanley Cup, and then tumble into a chocolate river while attempting to drink from it, eventually getting stuck in a suction tube. AUGUSTUS NOOOOOOO!

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