What does it take to get the NHL off the ice and into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then back on the ice in a nationally televised game on Black Friday? Family-style synergy among NBC, the NHL, Macy’s and Discover Financial Services that would make the nepotism at Disney, ESPN and ABC seem like poor relations.

The genealogy goes something like this: NBC and the NHL earlier this year signed a multi-platform ten-year deal. The NHL and Discover earlier this month extended their marketing partnership. NBC airs the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and this year’s event will include the premiere of “Frozen Fall Fun,” a float that is being co-branded by the NHL and Macy’s. In addition to a hockey theme, it will feature rapper Cee Lo Green, who stars on NBC’s The Voice.

The float will serve as a promo for the inaugural “Discover Thanksgiving Showdown” on NBC the day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, featuring the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins hosting the Detroit Red Wings. Discover will air its two latest commercials in the “Peggy” campaign, which feature Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks and Bruins’ goalie Tim Thomas, respectively, seeking customer satisfaction from the unsatisfying Peggy (pictured below).

NBC has been supporting with a dedicated commercials, including one in which a group of guys gather a to watch the Discover Thanksgiving Showdown on TV, enabled by the fact that they think their wives have gone shopping. As it turns out, the women actually went to the hockey game.

In addition, the NHL-NBC alliance also encompasses the Bridgestone Winter Classic (Jan. 2), the All-Star Game (Jan. 29) and the Stanley Cup playoffs and finals beginning in April.

Big Lead Sports spoke with NHL COO John Collins and Jon Miller, NBC Sports President of Programming, about the NHL’s place in NBC’s sports landscape, which next year also includes Super Bowl XLVI and the Summer Olympics in London.

Big Lead Sports: The NHL has established its territory among fans and marketers in recent years with the Winter Classic. How does the Discover Thanksgiving Showdown compare to that.

Jon Miller: We enjoy our relationship with the NHL, and we just renewed and extended it for ten years. We are proud of the Winter Classic (the creation of which was spearheaded in 2007 by Miller and Collins), and are always looking for new and high-profile events to feature the league. Hockey Day in America, for example. We looked at the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and saw a time when a lot of people were at home, or at the home of family or friends, and didn’t see a big sports event that would attract their attention. Then we looked at one of hockey’s greatest rivalries, Boston and Detroit, two of the NHL’s Original Six teams. They only play twice during the regular season, so we said let’s take one of those games and turn it into a national event.

John Collins: We love big events, and we have been pushing the Winter Classic for five years, along with our digital medial growth. During the negotiations with NBC, we were looking for a way to get onto the schedule earlier in the season, get a little of that promotional push for the regular season, the Winter Classic and the playoffs. The Friday after Thanksgiving is traditionally a big day for the NHL. We have 13 games this year, and the Boston Bruins have had a game at on that Friday since 1990. Thanksgiving Day has been great for the NFL: family and football. So we figured on Friday, let’s make it family and hockey.

BLS: How and why did Discover become the title sponsor of the game?

JM: They saw the success that Bridgestone was having [as title sponsor of] the outdoor Winter Classic. When they were looking to renew their deal with the NHL, they wanted to enhance their alliance. So when the proposal for the Thanksgiving Showdown came, Discover jumped all over it. If you’re looking that the time period between Thanksgiving weekend and the holidays in December, it made a lot of sense for them to get their name and their services out-front for not only hockey fans, but the casual and non-hockey fans we anticipate will watch the game.

JC: Discover sponsored the All-Star Game last season in Carolina, and I think that was their first big taste of the NHL. Our attractive demo works really well for them. In the renewal discussions, they wanted to figure out a way to do more. In one of our first integrated meetings with NBC and Discover, we laid out a very ambitious plan. Discover wanted in, and to their credit the have taken it and made it even bigger, with dedicated commercials and other support. Then we came up with the idea of having a float in the Macy’s Day Parade to promote the event and took that to another level.

BLS: NBC over the next eight-to-nine months is going to televise the NFL playoffs, the Super Bowl and the 2012 Summer Olympics. How far up the ladder is the Thanksgiving Showdown?

JM: Very high. We are putting a lot of support behind the Thanksgiving Showdown, with promotions across the family of NBC networks. We promoted it heavily during NFL Sunday Night Football, during Notre Dame football, during the President’s Cup; and during prime-time and late-night programming, as well as our digital platforms. This is a big-time event and we are supporting it that way. We are reaching hundreds of millions of people every day with our broad-based network.

JC: Coming from the NFL [15 years as an executive in the league office and with the Cleveland Browns], doing my research, what people love about football are the same attributes that people love about hockey. This big-event strategy is not only designed to lure advertising dollars but to attract casual fans and get them to look at the game with a fresh set of eyes. There has been a lot happening around the league that has improved the game and the quality of play. So what the Thanksgiving Showdown and the Winter Classic allows us to do is expose the sport to casual fans. And we are in the middle of putting together with NBC and other partners our promotional plans for the Stanley Cup playoffs. We want to turn that into another March Madness.

BLS: The game is in the early afternoon, so won’t a lot of people be out shopping at that time on Black Friday?

JM: We did the research and found that a lot of people aren’t leaving their homes on Black Friday. They don’t want to go deal with the malls and shopping centers, so they’ll shop on-line. Now when they stay home and eat leftovers, they can do it while watching a great hockey game. And when you add the alliance with Discover, we want those people who are at home shopping on-line to associate that with the Discover Card.

JC: At our core, we have a young and tech-savvy fan base. They are very engaged on-line. We have been very aggressive with our digital media strategy. In the past, we felt we weren’t getting enough attention on traditional TV. With NBC, that is no longer the case. But we want people who watch games on television to be talking about the NHL on social media, going to NHL.com, watching NHL GameCenter. We are seeing our unique numbers growing and time-spent growing, mainly because we offer so much video on our site. But we see places where we can and will do more.

BLS: How strong during the Thanksgiving Showdown will the support be for the Winter Classic and the Stanley Cup playoffs?

JM: This is the earliest that an NHL game has been shown on network television in more than 20 years, so we see it as a great platform to talk about our NHL programming for the rest of the season. We are proud of our association with the Winter Classic and the way it has become part of the American sports landscape in just four years. The game [on Jan. 2] will be the fifth Winter Classic, and you’re looking at another tough rivalry with the Philadelphia Flyers [hosting] the New York Rangers. That’s going to get an awful lot of attention. But we’re not taking that for granted. So you will see a lot of promotional support, especially since we are tying it in to the rebranding of Versus to NBC Sports Network.

BLS: How strategic is the Thanksgiving Showdown to promote non-hockey events such as Super Bowl XLVI and the Olympics?

JM: You will see promotional support for those events. But we also have the two NFL wild card playoff games on the first Saturday of the year, and in 2012 we also will have the Triple Crown, the Ryder Cup, the U.S. (Golf) Open. So that will be a great place to showcase everything in sports that NBC is involved with. There is a voracious appetite in the country for quality sports, quality production and great storytelling. And I believe that’s what we do better than anybody.

BLS: How involved will Versus, which will rebrand to NBC Sports Network, be during the season?

JM: The trick is to put events in places where people can see them and make sure you let people know it’s out there. That’s the benefit of having the resources and outlets at NBC, what will soon be NBC Sports Network and our other television and digital platforms. Hockey is central to our programming at Versus now and what will soon be NBC Sports Network. We are driving viewers there, and [NBC Sports Network] will drive viewers to NBC. For example, after the Winter Classic on NBC, we will have live post-game coverage on NBC Sports Network. And we are hopeful that we will have some pretty big news to announce during that live post-game show. So the overall integration is very important.

JC: NBC has been a great partner, but his new deal will really put an emphasis on how strong the relationship is and how it will grow. To be put at the center of the Comcast-NBC Universal sports strategy, to be a key part of the rebranding of Versus to NBC Sports Network when they literally throw the switch [on Jan. 2], really says something about our alliance. It is not as if they are saying, ‘We have the NFL, Super Bowl, the Olympics and by the way there is also some hockey.’ They are saying to fans and the advertising community that the NHL is a focal part of their strategy. We love the idea that we are side-by-side with Sunday Night Football, the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

BLS: Where can the NHL take this alliance moving forward?

JC: We have created a strategy where the NBC sales force can take strong selling points about the NHL and our demographics to potential advertisers. With the Thanksgiving Showdown, NBC is in front of the advertising marketplace talking about hockey much sooner than they traditionally have been. We are just figuring out how to flex our muscles with the NBC guys. The rebranding of Versus to the NBC Sports Network has been really beneficial for us. It’s going to pay off for us. This season, for the first time in the U.S., every game in every round of the Stanley Cup playoffs will be nationally televised in its entirety. As recently as a year ago, 40% of the games in the first two rounds were not televised nationally in their entirety. There is still a lot of growth potential for the NHL, and this partnership with NBC will help us get there.

PHOTOS: Boston Bruins-Detroit Red Wings: Michael Tureski/Icon SMI; 2009 Winter Classic: Warren Wimmer/Icon SMI