
NHL Puck Drop 2021: NHL SVP, Technology Grant Nodine on an Amazing Ecosystem of Data, Video By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 - 12:39 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The puck has dropped on the NHL season and the league is embracing new technology initiatives that Grant Nodine, NHL, SVP, Technology, says has been a true collective effort. If there's one thing to say coming out of a couple of years of uncertainty it is that we've had tremendous partners to work and there are so many cool things going on, he says. The little things going on add up to just this amazing ecosystem of new data, new video, and new opportunities.
Topping the listis working with ESPN and Turner Sports, the two new national rights holders here in the U.S.
I can certainly say from my perspective that working with ESPN and Turner has been really good, says Nodine. We've kind of hit the ground running in a lot of ways and I think they're going to do some, some really cool stuff.
While ESPN and Turner are offering up their own innovations and new ways of broadcasting the NHL Nodine says the NHL will be innovating in many different areas with everything from puck tracking to on-ice officials having communications via Apple Watches to 5G and much more.
We're working with Verizon to up our game in arena with fan-centric apps that are going to be focused on the iterative experience, he says. We will leverage 5G for that and obviously continue to focus on our technologies on the bench for the coaches and players, be that additional video angles for those platforms or the addition of video to the larger coach's toolkit platform with a more analytical bed.
Nodine says that 5G will give fans a more ubiquitous experience as opposed to certain sections having good connectivity and others lousy.
There is much greater potential to saturate mobile devices with data and I think we can do almost anything in that environment; probably even better than at most people's homes, he adds. Verizon believes this as well: that they can deliver more video content to a mobile device in a 5G venue than most people could conceivably consume on their own home network.
5G will also help get content out of the arenas as the NHL has been working with AWS on an automation system that automates all of the cloud contribution and coders and the Elemental link devices that are in the venues.
We've got a backup primary and a backup feed of five different cameras going into the cloud into Zixi and also getting encoded as HLS to S3 so that we can use them in our various Web-based tools for the hockey, operations, officiating player, safety groups, and things like that. We've also expanded access to that system for a bunch of our radio rights holders and broadcasters so they can view feeds remotely.
Tapping into that system literally requires tapping into an iPad where the operator chooses a game that they're going to work, and they basically press buttons to start all of the encodes.
That turns up Media Live channels in the cloud and creates Media Connect flows that connects them into Zixi Zen master where we're also doing an AB fail over all those feeds, he explains. So those feeds are now available to anyone in our universe that we give access to straight out of the cloud. And TNT has been looking at using that for their highlights creation.
Player tracking will make it easier than ever to track time on ice, shifts, and more.
Nodine says there will also be plenty of tracking of players and pucks to give a new level of analysis and new set of data points for SMT.
We're excited to have tracking pucks back in the game and are very excited to have that and the statistics that tracking unlocks from the start of the season, he adds. We want to use player tracking data to provide personalized feeds of individual players with the equivalent of customizable ISOs and things like that. I think there's a lot that can get done with that technology so we're excited.
The tracking data will also be folded into the existing HITS statistics which are manually input during games. Dubbed the Time Series Database, it will reside in the AWS cloud and opens up a new level of analysis and also makes it much easier to find clips that pertain to certain situations like who is on the ice at a certain time and can also help automate on-air graphics creation.
A player or coach can go into any random point in the data for a game and do things like help players just watch their shifts as well as the statistics of other players on the ice at the same time, says Nodine. And broadcasters are focused on replay overlays and live overlays and we're working on also getting that available to all the in-game presentation people so fans in arena can start to reap some of those benefits.
The league is also expanding the availability the commentary information screen which was meant for the so they could see various tracking stats.
Now there are versions of that that will end up in front of fans on NHL.com and lots of other places as well, he adds.
The NHL is also looking at C360 camera technology with testing set for the Rogers Centre in Toronto as well as in Vancouver. The goal? To continue to move forward with making it easier to offer personalization of feeds. The current plan is for the camera systems which have been a hit on the sidelines of football games to be placed opposite the blue lines, right behind the benches on one end and by one of the penalty boxes on the other.
It will give us two ways to view players sitting on the bench but also a food forward and reverse angle of pretty much everything that is happening on the ice, says Nodine. And because of the resolution of the camera you can start to really look at zo
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
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...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
31/03/2026
MeyerPro delivered the LED production for the Microsoft Ignite 2025 keynote at Chase Center in San Francisco, using more than 2,700 ROE Visual panels across mul...
31/03/2026
The Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) is expanding membership outreach in 2026...
31/03/2026
ViewLift and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) have announced the launch of ViewLift Conversational AI Search on the MyOutdoorTV platform. The feature enables natural language...
31/03/2026
The Atlanta Braves and Gray Media have announced a multi-year agreement to simul...
31/03/2026
Gravity Media has delivered broadcast services for TAB Golden Slipper Day at Rosehill Gardens on March 21 and will now cover The Star Championships at Royal Ran...
31/03/2026
Synamedia has announced that Mileto Tecnologia, a Brazilian pay-TV operator, has selected the Synamedia Go platform for its OTT expansion. Mileto is also deploy...
31/03/2026
KMH Integration will attend NAB Show in Las Vegas with a focus on what the company calls AV Casting - an approach built on the idea that professional AV and bro...
31/03/2026
Prime Video will carry live coverage of the first and second rounds of the 2026 Masters Tournament, beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 9 and Friday, A...
31/03/2026
The NHL and its U.S. and Canadian broadcast partners have announced a collaborat...
31/03/2026
Daktronics has partnered with Wake Forest to manufacture and install a new end z...
31/03/2026
The National Football League has announced that Las Vegas will host Super Bowl LXIII in 2029 at Allegiant Stadium. The announcement was made at the NFL Annual M...
31/03/2026
The NFL has announced a partnership with TMRW Sports to develop and operate a professional flag football league for women and men. The league will launch with i...
31/03/2026
Sennheiser's Spectera wideband bidirectional wireless system was used by bot...
31/03/2026
Sports Studio Inc., the company behind Free Live Sports, has announced the formation of an Advisory Board with five media and technology executives.
Each of o...
31/03/2026
PSSI and Appear have announced a new phase in their collaboration, with PSSI deploying Appear's X Platform to upgrade its mobile fleet and PSSI Internationa...
31/03/2026
As sports media organization continue to seek out new ways to streamline their p...
31/03/2026
With two new expansion teams and viewership/attendance on the rise, the league's production/broadcast arm and its partner NEP Connected Solutions are busier...
31/03/2026
Spotify has evolved from a streaming platform to an interactive, multiformat eco...
31/03/2026
Lastest New Universal Synthesizer System module announced
Make Noise Music have recently announced the launch of the latest addition to their New Universal ...
31/03/2026
True Stereo DynIR Engine, Virtual Load Shaper & more
Two notes Audio Engineering's Captor X reactive load box and cabinet simulator has built up a solid...
31/03/2026
By Kiera Williams
Every year, a new group of emerging media and entertainment professionals steps into the HPA community - curious, talented, and ready to grow...
31/03/2026
MELBOURNE, Fla., March 31, 2026 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) will release its first quarter 2026 financial results before the market opens on Thursday, A...
31/03/2026
Photo courtesy of NASA. An illustration shows NASA's Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars....
31/03/2026
L3Harris Technologies and Comtech Telecommunications Corp. have collaborated to introduce the next evolution in resilient multi-orbit capability for today's...
31/03/2026
Rebel Sport leads ad investment as brands compete for a large, active and qualit...
31/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
31/03/2026
CueScript, a leading international developer of professional teleprompting solutions, is enhancing its platform with three innovations that elevate flexibility,...
31/03/2026
#GALSNGEAR will host a series of meetups, panel discussions, and networking events during the 2026 NAB Show, taking place April 18 22 in Las Vegas.
The organi...
31/03/2026
At the 2026 NAB Show (April 19-22, Las Vegas Convention Center, Booth #N1328), Imagine Communications is introducing AI assisted scheduling capabilities within ...
31/03/2026
High-density upgrade for mobile fleet and PSSI International Teleport gives PSSI more flexibility for premium live event coverage
PSSI and Appear today announc...
31/03/2026
Solid State Logic Enhances Virtualized System T Platform to Deliver Scalable Clo...
31/03/2026
OWC to Showcase Storage, Workflow Acceleration, and Reliability Solutions for Cr...
31/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
31/03/2026
OpenDrives, a leader in software-defined video and rich media storage management solutions, will demonstrate several new innovations at the 2026 NAB Show in Apr...
31/03/2026
At the 2026 NAB Show, SDVI will demonstrate how its Rally media supply chain management platform continues to give media operations teams the tools they need to...
31/03/2026
Boland Communications today announced that at the 2026 NAB Show, it will introduce its new QD4K315HDR10, a 31.5-inch QD-OLED monitor delivering exceptional colo...
31/03/2026
Dr. Paul Tapper, CEO of NUGEN Audio, will lead an essential industry discussion at the 2026 NAB Show, examining whether dialog intelligibility is poised to beco...
31/03/2026
BCNEXXT will use NAB 2026 to focus on how broadcasters can turn today's operational and market pressures into opportunity. Meeting with customers in the IAB...
31/03/2026
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, will showcase its latest innovations at th...
31/03/2026
DHD announces that AI-based audio noise reduction is now available as a powerful new option for its XD3 IP Core. Developed in cooperation with ai-coustics, audi...
31/03/2026
PTZOptics will showcase its vision for intelligent video and advanced camera automation at NAB Show 2026 (#N1902). Through immersive demonstrations and technolo...
31/03/2026
Experience Commerce, a leading full-service digital marketing agency and part of the Cheil SWA Group, has secured the social media mandate for ICONIQA Hotels & ...
31/03/2026
Fabric, the entertainment industry's leader in data and operations solutions, will showcase a major expansion of its media technology platform at NAB 2026, ...
31/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
31/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...