How a 1970s Canadian band provided the surprise song of the Stanley Cup playoffs

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Gil Moore readied his putt on the 18th hole of the Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, taking advantage of the relatively brief anonymity. He didn’t expect anyone beyond his buddies to recognize him during their round at the course in Mississauga, Ont., considered one of Canada’s best. But as the longtime professional drummer stood over his ball on that late-spring day this year, a nearby golfer spotted him and yelled a string of words that have been stuck in Moore’s head for nearly half a century.

“Just lay it on the line, Gil!”

When Moore and his bandmates with the Canadian hard rock trio Triumph created “Lay It On The Line” in 1979, it took them all of 15 minutes to rehearse and record what received a solid radio run for the time. But they couldn’t have imagined that one day, decades into the future, it would become the soundtrack for the Stanley Cup playoffs thanks to a seconds-long commercial that they barely knew existed before it aired.

At the beginning of the 2024-25 NHL postseason in April, as a show of support for the five Canadian teams that qualified, Rogers Communications unveiled a televised ad backed by “Lay It On The Line” on its NHL rights-holding channel, Sportsnet. A similar spot debuted in the second round, featuring a fresh batch of hockey footage yet still backed by the same rousing song. If you live in Canada, you may have seen it or heard it several times — or several hundred.

“Early on, we said we really wanted our campaign idea (to be): ‘This is our game,’” Rogers chief brand and communications officer Terrie Tweddle said. “So, we really wanted to match that with an iconic Canadian musician or band.

“We knew it was the perfect song for the start of the playoffs, just the positivity, the energy and confidence that comes with that song. We just thought it would fit really well with the message we’re trying to communicate. And we feel really good about the choice.”

With new listeners clamoring to hear it for the first time, the song spent three weeks at the No. 1 spot on Shazam’s Top 200 Canadian chart. Since then, throughout its unexpected resurgence, “Lay It On The Line” has been used by hockey fans as both an anthem to support their favorite team and as TikTok meme fodder. The band was even invited to perform in an NHL-sponsored free concert on Friday night in Edmonton before Game 2 of this year’s Stanley Cup Final, as the Connor McDavid-led Oilers look to end Canada’s 32-year championship drought against the Florida Panthers.

“You can’t buy that kind of rotation, right?” Triumph bassist and keyboardist Mike Levine said. “In the old days on radio, that was in heavy rotation. You (couldn’t) get away from the song, but it was because people liked the song.

“I think, certainly, a whole lot more people (now) got introduced to the song and the band (through the Rogers ad).”

And so, despite the occasional annoyance of an overzealous fan interrupting a putt, the members of Triumph are enjoying their surprising brush with fame long after they burst onto the music scene.

“There’s a lot of terrible things going on across the globe and some horrible wars,” Moore said. “Canadians can unite and relax for a little bit and enjoy hockey. It’s a really special thing and not just for Canadians. Obviously, the Panthers have massive fans all across America. So, being part of something where music’s used as a tool to bring people together, that’s what’s special to me.”

It was the 1970s, and Moore and Levine were in another band. Abernathy Shagnaster’s Wash & Wear featured four members instead of three, and played blues instead of rock and metal. They weren’t taking the project all that seriously either. Moore had grown interested in sound and lighting, while Levine worked for a record company and produced commercial jingles.

“Making it just seemed like scaling Mount Everest,” Moore said. “It was just that none of the (Canadian) bands that were around were making it. It didn’t seem like it was even possible. The Guess Who had success earlier, but that’s one band out of the entire country. It’s not a very good track record.”

Against those long odds, Moore and Levine persisted. They would sit down with a bottle of scotch, listening to rock acts such as The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream. That’s how they got the idea to become a “power trio.” But they needed a guitarist, auditioning a handful of them to no avail. Finally, the two men got a tip about a guitarist and singer named Rik Emmett, then fronting a band called Act III, who was slated to perform at the Hollywood Tavern in nearby Etobicoke, Ont.

“Immediately, we flipped,” Moore said. “He’s the guy.”

“This guy’s amazing,” Levine said. “He can sing, he can dance.”

Emmett joined the band, and together, Triumph kicked off their 1975 tour at a high school gym in Simcoe, Ont. Three years later, the trio began work on their third album, “Just A Game.” The tracks were recorded at the now-defunct Sound Interchange Studios in Toronto, as British rock megastar Rod Stewart was in the booth next door. According to Moore, after writing “Lay It On The Line,” Emmett had more or less figured out the chords and rhythms as well when he presented it to Moore and Levine. Once they began rehearsing, it took about 15 minutes to put the whole song together.

“One of the things about a song that’s well written is we didn’t have to wrestle it to the ground,” Moore said. “So, Rik really did a great job on that song. It was complete from the ground up.”

As “Just A Game” achieved Gold status in the United States and platinum in Canada through record sales, “Lay It On The Line” peaked at No. 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks.

Still, the song’s reinsertion into the public sphere took the band by surprise. Had it not been for a contact at Live Nation tipping him off, Moore wouldn’t have known that Triumph’s song was slated for a national commercial. Levine learned even later, when he flipped the channel on his television to Sportsnet one day after the Stanley Cup playoffs had started.

“It’s like a brilliant commercial,” Levine said. “The editing was fantastic. They put together a great visual. (They) edited the song perfectly. I go, ‘Oh, that was really cool.’ I called my wife, and 15 minutes later it runs again. And then it runs again, and then it runs again.”

Thanks to the song going viral, the repetition has paid off for the band. Along with the spike in listens, plus the added exposure from its live Cup Final concert, a tribute album to Triumph was also released Friday, featuring covers of the trio’s best songs — including “Lay It On The Line.”

The same recent day that one golfer hollered at him to, “just lay it on the line, Gil,” the drummer of Triumph was approached at the same country club by another stranger — or, as Moore put it, a “funny well-wisher.” This person asked whether the drummer had grown tired of hearing the song quoted back to him so often in recent weeks.

“No,” Moore replied. “As a matter of fact, I was sick of it 30 years ago from playing it every night.”

(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; photos: Jeff Goode / Getty, Icon sportswire / Getty, Brian Babinau / Getty, Courtesy of Chipster PR; video courtesy Sportsnet)

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