How NHL games will look and sound different when play resumes this evening

Don’t look now but the NHL returns to action this evening as six teams hit the ice for three exhibition games. The Pittsburgh Penguins will face the Philadelphia Flyers and the Toronto Maple Leafs will face the Montreal Canadiens in Toronto while the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames do battle in Edmonton. 

Hockey’s back, baby!

Personally, I’m very much looking forward to kicking my feet up and watching some NHL hockey this evening. I’m even more interested to see what sort of changes broadcasters like Sportsnet and NBC make to their broadcasts this evening after promising to embrace new technologies, camera angles and production elements with the NHL’s Return to Play.

In his latest column for ESPN, NHL insider Grey Wyshynski chats with NHL chief content officer and senior executive VP of events and entertainment Steve Mayer and manages to get some details on just how the league plans on serving up new and exciting things for its fans via broadcast.

“We’re never going to have this kind of creative freedom. Without fans, it makes it different. Whether that’s good or bad, it just changes the way you do things,” says Mayer. “Hopefully everybody likes it. I know there are going to be people that just want to watch the game. And when the puck drops, for the most part, they’re just going to watch the game. We’re not messing with the game. We’re just trying to make it look pretty.”

Mayer spoke at length about the importance of getting atmosphere right through sound. Will the NHL pipe in crowd noise? Will they even both with music?

From Mayer:

From a game presentation standpoint, it's going to sound extremely similar, with music and whistles and public address announcers and pump-up videos. We're going to experiment with the crowd noise inside the arena. That's something we're going to do during the exhibition play. We've heard what it sounds like in here, but we want to actually hear if it's a distraction for the players. I heard a report that some of the baseball players, it sounds like, had reactions to [piped-in crowd noise]. So we're going to try it out. Let's see what level it needs to be at.

On the TV side, we're bringing in audio sweeteners. We've really worked hard at getting every possible sound at all of these different arenas. That's for the broadcast, but we would try to take [that sound] and bring it into the arena, too.

So, just how different will tonight's games look and sound to hockey fans? 

Again from Mayer:

We're not doing a typical event for fans. We're doing a made-for-television event because all of our fans are going to be watching at home. You're going to see a couple of funny moments where we acknowledge that. A mascot might show up on the screens with a sign that says "GET LOUDER!" and he's going to turn the card, and it's going to say "YOU ... AT HOME!"

This is going to be bizarro world. I'm so excited about it, but at the same time, I've nervous about it. My goal is to keep everybody as healthy and as safe as possible. Let's finish this thing. But at the same time ... this is cool.

For the full article from Wyshynski, click below: