Michael Bublé and Drew Scott hoping to score with new Prime Video series Hometown Giants

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On paper, Hometown Giants has all the ingredients of a glossy sports series: famous owners, a storied Canadian game, and a junior hockey team chasing a championship.

But the six-part Prime Video docuseries quickly finds its drama somewhere more vulnerable — in the teenage players trying to make a Western Hockey League roster, battling injuries, and living with the knowledge that only a small fraction will reach the professional ranks.

Streaming now, the series follows the Vancouver Giants through their 2025-26 season, from training camp and a gruelling road trip, to the trade deadline and NHL draft. It is produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Scott Brothers Entertainment, with team co-owners Michael Bublé and Drew Scott serving as executive producers and appearing throughout the series.

The project also has deep local roots. Bublé is from Burnaby, while Scott grew up in Maple Ridge and lives in North Vancouver. The two met through Bublé’s sister about 30 years ago, long before Bublé became an international music star and Scott created the Property Brothers and a television empire with his twin brother, Jonathan.

“This is all about community,” Bublé said. “This is about our hometown and being able to come together. Two kids from these stomping grounds, to be able to come back and be a part of growing our community and pulling everyone together, is phenomenal.”

Scott nodded, then supplied the punchline. “Also, a big part of this was to feed Michael’s hockey ego. He wanted to feel more involved in hockey,” he said with a laugh, referring to Bublé’s well-documented devotion to the game and the Vancouver Canucks. Bublé even has an indoor rink at his Burnaby home.

Bublé joined the Giants’ ownership group in 2008. Scott came aboard in 2023 with one firm condition: he did not want to be merely another celebrity attached to a team.

“I’ve been producing for almost 20 years now, and we have 15 series that we produce on the unscripted side,” Scott said. “I just didn’t want to join to be another celebrity face that was part of the team if I wasn’t contributing.”

Scott began thinking about what his production experience could bring to a franchise that had not won a championship since 2007. The answer was to put the players’ stories at the centre.

That plainspoken enthusiasm is the series’ strongest asset. Beneath the celebrity banter and the business ambitions, Hometown Giants is a story about teenagers living under pressure, adults trying to guide them, and a season that didn’t follow a championship script.

“It’s the emotional journey of these kids,” Scott said. “You’ll laugh, you’re going to cry.”

For Bublé, access to the team is the fulfilment of a childhood wish.

“I am the hugest dork hockey fan ever. I live, breathe hockey, and I have always bitched and complained that there was no access,” Bublé said. “With Hometown Giants, we get to know what it is really like when the curtain is pulled back. As a hockey fan, to get to go from that first day of training camp to that kid standing on the stage getting drafted — that’s what I’ve always wanted to see.”

The series follows a season that did not deliver the triumphant arc its famous owners imagined. A few Giants did hear their names called at the NHL draft, but the team finished last in its conference — far from the championship talk that opens the series.

“It was a tough season. We went through a ton of adversity to the point where, as an owner, it was tough, frustrating, a little hard to live with,” Bublé said. “But the producers were so happy, smiling all the time. And I was like, ‘Why, why, why are you smiling?’ And they were going, ‘Because you couldn’t write this.’”

Any contemporary portrait of Canadian junior hockey also carries the weight of the scandals that have forced the sport to confront questions about culture, accountability and player conduct. Junior ice hockey players in Canada have been the subject of sexual assault investigations by police many times over the years. In May 2022, it was reported that Hockey Canada — the governing body for the sport in Canada — had paid a settlement to a woman who alleged that she was the victim of a sexual assault perpetrated in 2018 by members of Canada’s men’s national junior team.

When asked about the dark mark on junior hockey, Scott said responsibility begins with team leadership and the environment it creates.

“I think it’s really important now more than ever to have programming like this that can really show what proper leadership can do for kids,” Scott said. “I grew up in sports. Sport helped me build confidence. It helped give me that community. It helped me in so many ways to shape who I am as an adult.”

Bublé pointed back to the example set by Pat Quinn and Gordie Howe, who were among the Giants’ co-owners when he joined the group, which is led by Vancouver businessman Ron Toigo.

“At that time, I was so naive. I thought it was all just about winning,” Bublé said. “Honestly, their goal was to make citizens, to create better people and to leave the world in a better place. I think, what we can do — what the whole team can do — is help set an example of how things should be done.”

The new series arrives in a crowded field of sports docuseries, with Welcome To Wrexham among the genre’s biggest successes. Its co-owner and star Ryan Reynolds, another B.C.-born entertainer turned sports executive, opens Hometown Giants with a cheeky — it’s Reynolds after all — warning.

“If I were to offer any unsolicited sports-ownership advice, it’s really mainly one thing: Don’t do it,” Reynolds says to camera. Reynolds also gave Bublé a more useful note about making the series.

“He said, ‘Don’t pretend to be smarter than you are,’” Bublé recalled. “He said, ‘You’re a good guy. You love your city and your country, you love hockey. You bring a lot of light, and you’re a storyteller. Just do that. Don’t pretend to be something else.’ And it was great advice.”