Stanley Cup Final Caps Impressive NHL Broadcast Effort in Edmonton Traditional compound layout supports broadcast teams from NBC Sports (U.S.), Rogers (Canada) By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, September 25, 2020 - 1:35 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
With a pair of Stanley Cup Final games on the agenda for this weekend (Game 4 on Friday, Game 5 on Saturday, both 8 p.m. ET on NBC), the National Hockey League is drawing toward the conclusion of its grand Hub Cities experiment and, thus, the successful broadcasting of its playoff season under exceptional circumstances.
Since the start of the Conference Finals this month, the NHL bubble has been reduced to a single venue: Rogers Place in Edmonton, AB, and the hybrid onsite/ at-home production model has continued to evolve.
The NHL hosts Stanley Cup Final Games 4 and 5 this weekend in Edmonton.
With more resources centralized in a single location, the league has deployed new tools and services in support of its broadcast partners (NBC in the U.S., Rogers in Canada): additional onsite production facilities, more camera angles, and added graphic enhancements (including roll-out of the league's highly anticipated puck- and player-tracking system).
It has been a long, collaborative process with our television partners and all of our end units, says Dan O'Neill, VP, arena and event operations, NHL. The collaborative nature of working with the volume of entities and giving them the platform to do their business has been great.
Condensed Compound, Limited Crews The hybrid production model in Edmonton has led to a minor increase in the size of the production compound since the league left Toronto to finish out the playoffs in the single venue. The side-by-side lineup of three trucks comprises NEP Broadcasting's ND5 (NBC Sports' top hockey truck) and Dome Productions' Silver (handling the major part of the game broadcast for Rogers and the world feed) and Unite (serving as a production B unit).
According to O'Neill, NBC Sports and Rogers are still producing the vast majority of their productions (graphics, audio mix, even on-air talent in some cases) from their respective home broadcast centers: Stamford, CT, and Toronto, respectively). However, NBC has nine or 10 crew members onsite working socially distant in ND5; Rogers has 12 or 13 crew members in its units.
More than 20 cameras are covering the action at Rogers Place in Edmonton, including five robotic cameras shooting in super-slo-mo, like this one positioned on the glass above the Tampa Bay Lighting bench.
O'Neill gives a nod to NHL Group VP, Broadcast Technology, Mark Haden, who played a critical role in coordinating the vast network of feeds and enhancements (data embedding, audio mapping, profanity-garbling systems with multiple feeds being delayed, puck/player tracking) for national and regional broadcasters dating back to the start of this effort back in June.
There is also a smattering of personnel onsite from other groups providing support, including SMT (which powers the puck- and player-tracking system and other virtual-graphics enhancements, such as dynamic statistical displays on the boards), WorldStage (the event-technology specialist assisting NHL Chief Content Officer Steve Mayer and his team in designing and building the in-arena structures that turned a hockey rink into essentially a television sound studio), and Cat Entertainment Services (providing power support not only for the compound but for the wide range of LEDs added to the arena's staging).
Versatile Camera Arsenal The NHL has upgraded its JITACAM by replacing its camera with a Sony HDC-P50, making it 4K-capable.
The NHL has been creative with camera deployment in Edmonton, having both expanded and enhanced its arsenal since the start of the Conference Finals.
The league has also relied on robotic cameras to add angles to the production without compromising personnel protocols. Currently, there are five robos on the rink, including one atop the glass of each end zone.
Providing Partners the Tools To Succeed How do we give [the networks] the opportunity to be creative on their own front, plus make it manageable, says O'Neill. The league, he adds, put in the work to give them their own unilateral cameras, individual comms paths, and raw clock/score data feeds for the networks to design and build their own graphics packages. It also allowed each network to fax each aspect of the operation on their end on game days.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
Stanley Cup Final Caps Impressive NHL Broadcast Effort in Edmonton Traditional compound layout supports broadcast teams from NBC Sports (U.S.), Rogers (Canada) By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
