NHL Puck Drop 2021: Sportsnet Looks To Limit Travel, Enhance Safety, Maintain Quality The broadcaster had mere weeks to prep for a return to arenas By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 - 2:28 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
After an abbreviated offseason fraught with uncertainty, Sportsnet heads back to the ice tonight for the start of an NHL season unlike any other. Having managed broadcast operations for the NHL's Edmonton bubble during the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Sportsnet is now tasked with producing hundreds of national and regional broadcasts from home arenas across Canada.
In an effort to limit travel and enhance safety, Sportsnet has worked with other broadcasters in Canada to set a standard for production facilities at each venue - regardless of whether the game is a national or regional broadcast.
There was so much uncertainty around what was going on in terms of travel, says Sportsnet VP, Production, Rob Corte. Our position from the get-go has always been safety first, so we've worked with the other networks to come up with a game-production standard with set facilities for each venue. That's the standard we're going to hold - regardless if it's a regional or national game. In Canada, hockey is obviously king, so even our regional broadcasts are resourced quite heavily. There's not a huge difference between a national game and a regional game, so we have facility levels across Canada that are worthy of servicing a national game.
Sharing the Load: Sportsnet, TNS, TVE, RDS Divvy Up the Venues On the national-broadcast side, Sportsnet plans to deploy a dedicated mobile production unit and crew onsite for the majority of its Hockey Night in Canada and Wednesday Night Hockey telecasts but will look to use local crew whenever possible to limit travel. At least to start the season, Sportsnet plans to have commentators and production teams onsite for all national broadcasts and regional home shows. For regional road games, commentators will call the action off-tube (from either the home arena or the local broadcast facility), and the production team will work from a control room at Sportsnet HQ in Toronto.
At Sportsnet's Toronto studios, all positions - including on-air talent - are required to be 6 ft. apart.
We're not going to be flying people in and adding cameras left and right, at least initially to start the season, says Corte. But we will still have a very big show onsite. Due to the travel restrictions and our need to uphold the safety of everyone, we're trying to limit travel as much as possible. We're using as many local people as we can, and we have robust facility levels in every city so that, if you go in and do a national regional game, the shows will look big.
As for regional broadcasts (Sportsnet delivers four regional feeds in Canada), the company has worked with fellow NHL rightsholders TSN, TVE, and RDS to assign each Canadian NHL venue to one broadcaster based on media rights so that only a single mobile unit and crew are onsite for each game. Sportsnet will take Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver and split Toronto with TSN, which has will also handle Winnipeg and Ottawa. French-language broadcasters TVE and RDS will split Montreal.
In our conversations with the league, says Corte, it made the best sense for Canada to have their own plan separate from the U.S., because there are different nuances for both. There are obviously less teams, and it's a little simpler in Canada because Dome Productions is the facilities and technical provider for all the broadcasters across the board; in the States, you have various vendors in different marketplaces.
Similar to the workflow used for Major League Baseball last year, the home-team broadcaster will be responsible for delivering a clean feed to the away team's broadcast partner, which will integrate its telecast remotely. Away-team broadcasters will also be given ancillary cameras (the number varies depending on the venue) and an AD in the truck to help augment this clean feed. Each network has devised its own plan in terms of how to customize the respective broadcasts and whether commentators will be onsite or call games off-tube from home.
For example, says Corte, if Vancouver is at home against Ottawa on a regional broadcast, we will do a full-up broadcast from Vancouver - including commentators, graphics, everything onsite - and provide a clean feed that would go to the visiting show, which is TSN in the case of the Senators. Then, TSN makes the decision whether they call it off-tube from their studios in Toronto or have their commentators at the rink in Ottawa. Eventually, if more people are allowed onsite, [the broadcasters] might have more presence onsite.
Sportsnet and other NHL broadcasters will work closely with each team to ensure that each venue's safety protocols (and each province's regulations) are observed, including regular testing, wearing of PPE, sanitizing workstations, and social distancing. At Sportsnet's studios in Toronto, the broadcaster has had strict safety protocols in place for months and has installed plexiglass to separate workstations throughout the facility.
Puck and Player Tracking Comes of Age in NHL Broadcasts After an initial rollout during the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, the NHL's player- and puck-tracking system (developed in conjunction with SMT) has been installed in all 31 arenas this year and will be available for broadcasters to use in their coverage. Corte believes that stats and information from the new tracking system will be featured in Sportsnet broadcasts primarily via the scorebug early on, but he expects to see virtual elements used more frequently as the season progresses.
We had some exposure to the player- and puck-tracking
Most recent headlines
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Scripps Research study links sleep variability with sleep apnea and hypertension How consumers' digital activity trackers could enable personalized health s...
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Experience the power of WO Automation for Radio's newest service, the System Effectiveness Review. Designed to help you achieve more, a System Effectiveness...
23/12/2025
23 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan and Rakuten Symphony Collaborate to A...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
NHL Puck Drop 2021: Sportsnet Looks To Limit Travel, Enhance Safety, Maintain Quality The broadcaster had mere weeks to prep for a return to arenas By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
