Boston Pizza promised 30,000 free pizzas if the Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup on Monday night. And even though the Oilers unfortunately lost 2-1 against the Florida Panthers, Boston Pizza says it will still go through with the giveaway.

The brand’s offer of 30,000 free pizzas in Edmonton and other select markets was set up to celebrate a Canadian NHL team winning the Stanley Cup, and ending the now 31-year drought for Canadian teams since one was crowed NHL champion.

The brand says a Boston Pizza delivery truck will make its way through Edmonton on Wednesday to distribute “consolation coupons” redeemable for a free pizza. The brand will also give away free pizza to local fans in Edmonton who head to its location at the Ice District on the same day to pick up a coupon. The brand has promoted the giveaway through public relations and organic social media. Some participating Boston Pizza locations will also offer free pizza coupons.

The initiative is part of Boston Pizza’s “Team Up for the Win” campaign, which the brand and its AOR Camp Jefferson launched before the playoffs began to support the fanbases behind the four Canadian teams that had qualified for the postseason.

Once the Edmonton Oilers reached the Stanley Cup Finals, Boston Pizza changed its brand colors from blue and red to orange and blue, applying the Oilers theme across social media, web, TV, print and OOH billboards. It also deployed additional billboards in cities across Canada with real-time scoreboards, which updated the results during each game of the finals.

UM Canada handled media buying, with Heads & Tales in charge of public relations.

Boston Pizza director of marketing Niels van Oyen tells Media in Canada that the playoffs are a good platform to drive traffic to the brand and reach engaged hockey fans. The team found the best way to do that was to encourage fans to come together and support whichever Canadian team was in the final, Oyen says.

“Boston Pizza is all about bringing people together, and this campaign was built to rally Canadians around the shared goal of ending our nation’s hockey heartache,” Oyen says. “Canada is hungry for a win, and we wanted to give all Edmonton supporters an extra reason to cheer even harder going into game 7.”

Camp Jefferson associate creative director Ashley Babcock tells Media in Canada that while it’s evident that hockey fans want their favourite team to win first and foremost, the brand’s studies found that two out of three believe that the next best thing is for another Canadian team to win.

“Round by round, game by game, we saw more and more Canadians embrace the idea of supporting their rivals in the name of national pride,” Babcock says.

Babcock adds that although the plan was to go with the last Canadian team standing, Edmonton’s presence in the finals was a bonus for Boston Pizza, since that’s the city where the brand was founded 60 years ago.