NHL's Latest Player and Puck Tracking Efforts Aimed at Revolutionizing the Hockey Viewing Experience Workflows speed the turnaround time and simplify the packaging and presentation of advanced data for broadcast By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - 4:26 pm
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For Keith Horstman, this is all very familiar.
After more than two decades at the NBA and playing a pivotal role in the development of that league's robust player and real-time data tracking system, the NHL's VP of Technology now finds himself at the epicenter of the next generation of data, statistics, and video visualization for the sport of hockey.
Since joining the NHL last spring, player and puck tracking has occupied the top of Horstman's to-do list with the past couple of months beginning to show the fruits of that labor. After extensive tests, fans got a peek at what the next generation of the hockey viewing experience could look like at last month's NHL All-Star Game in San Jose.
The NHL - in association with its enterprise applications software and database partner SAP worked with its major rightsholders (NBC Sports and Rogers) and the in-venue production team at SAP Arena to execute a workflow that made the packaging and display of all of this valuable data simple and in a way that was exciting for hockey fans to consume.
Player and puck tracking is here! #HiTechHockey
Get to see this @SAP technology live during tomorrow night s @Honda #NHLAllStar Game at 8:00p ET on @nbc, @CBC, @Sportsnet & @TVASports! pic.twitter.com/uPD8vSSYBM
NHL (@NHL) January 25, 2019
Using a chip-based system, the league was able to track the puck and players on the ice in a more seamless and comprehensive way than ever before. Marrying that new tracking information with its already establishing in-house Hockey Information Tracking System (HITS) that tallies all of the essentials to properly logging and scoring a hockey game (time-on-ice, faceoffs won/lost, shots on goal, missed shots, shot types, penalties, etc.), the league (and its stats and broadcast graphics partner SMT) are developing a workflow where the packaging and visualization of data is a simplified process that produces on-screen visuals that are both compelling to the viewer and easy to integrate for the producer.
Broadcasters were dropping in IDs (or pointers) that followed players, trails of players or the puck, and advanced analytics of performance all at or close to real time. Even NBC Sports Digital streamed out an alternative version of its broadcast completely dedicated to showcasing this rich data.
At its core, Horstman believes there are few sports - if any - that will benefit more from the data tracking revolution permeating throughout sports and that the experience at the All-Star Game was just the tip of the iceberg.
The nature of tracking data really associates with the game more [in hockey] than in a baseball or football game, says Horstman. It goes back to the way we do stats; the old way of putting in single events. Now we've got the fluid flow of data for the continuous game. That really sets aside hockey from everything else. Not only did the player score from this spot, but how did he get there or how did the goalie come across the crease to make a save? There's much more we can do with the fullness of the data in this sport than you really can with other sports.
The Dawn of a Data Revolution?
The NHL's efforts at All-Star naturally drew the attention of many news entities and garnered some tech-y headlines, but, for the league, this is about much more than just showing off a few flashy new toys at a tentpole event. This is a system that, when completed, the NHL envisions will revolutionize the entire stats and data distribution and visualization process at every level of the league.
In that future, integration of the current HITS system with the new tracking system in an environment where everything from player identification to data distribution is automated ha the potential to completely change how the league both documents on-ice play and how it distributed data with its wide array of partners.
There's still much work to be done, however. Even currently, the activating of the tracking of the puck is a manual process. When refined, the league will install a series of sensors on the boards near the penalty box doors where referees will obtain a new puck that is coming into play for a faceoff. When the new pucks pass through that door, the system will be able to activate that puck and validate data being obtained from it for downstream use.
Integration with the clock is also vital and ultimately what ties the entire process together. With a tracking system that can essentially log all of the actions taking place on the ice by both players and the puck in place, adding in synchronization with the game clock makes the finished product, essentially, the league's official box score of the game
Ultimately all of the data will join up in a single server and will do all downstream distribution of HITS data and tracking from there, says Horstman. We will include an intelligence engine in there using HITS data, tracking data, and outside algorithms to produce new types of data.
This would also change the role of the game's statistician. No longer will they be a logger of a game's events, but rather an official auditor of the data being calculated.
The league is currently working through the process of doing a thorough scanning of all of its arenas to establish exact coordinates of the ice surface to lay a foundation for the player and puck tracking layer of the system. According to Horstman, about 75% of the leagues arenas have been scanned with the rest to be completed in the upcoming month. From there, a site survey is done of
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NHL's Latest Player and Puck Tracking Efforts Aimed at Revolutionizing the Hockey Viewing Experience Workflows speed the turnaround time and simplify the packaging and presentation of advanced data for broadcast By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
