
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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
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...
18/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
18/06/2026
PTZOptics has unveiled new Visual Reasoning demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 (Boo...
18/06/2026
IBC2026 will take place at the RAI Amsterdam from September 11-14, bringing toge...
18/06/2026
InfoComm 2026 held its first-ever Media Day on June 17, providing journalists an...
18/06/2026
FOR-A America has announced a Trade Agreements Act (TAA)-compliant LED display solution combining Alfalite's Litepix LED displays and Brompton Technology...
18/06/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level have one major thing in common: the intensity and attention to detail ramps up dur...
18/06/2026
The International Federation of American Football (IFAF) and TMRW Sports have an...
18/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has unveiled Io Xpand, a Thunderbolt 5-enabled PCIe expansion ...
18/06/2026
ESPN has announced its coverage plans for the 30th anniversary of the WNBA's...
18/06/2026
FOX Sports' Big Noon Kickoff will broadcast live from Wembley Stadium in Lon...
18/06/2026
InfoComm 2026 opened on Wednesday at the Las Vegas Convention Center, bringing t...
18/06/2026
As media companies look to deliver more live, VOD, and snackable sports content ...
18/06/2026
Top L-R: Take Me Home, The Lake
Bottom L-R: TheyDream, Union County
Free Summer Screening Series Announced
Screenings for the Local Utah Community at...
18/06/2026
Improvements & new IR content
iamReverb Audio have just launched a free update that kits their convolution reverb plug-in out with some new features and int...
18/06/2026
Modelling suite gains improved captures, iOS support & more
Two notes Audio Engineering have just announced the launch of Genome 2.0, a significant update t...
18/06/2026
New AI assistance feature, video overhaul & more
VSL have just announced the launch of Vienna Ensemble Pro 8.1 and 8.1V, a pair of major updates to their ev...
18/06/2026
The average daily TV screen time in May was 3 hours and 36 minutes, marking a clear decrease of 15 minutes compared to April. This trend proved to be much stron...
18/06/2026
Integration embeds Gracenote content intelligence, including contextual segments...
18/06/2026
AJA Video Systems unveiled Io Xpand, a high-performance Thunderbolt 5-enabled PCIe expansion chassis for AJA KONA and Corvid video and audio I/O cards. As dema...
18/06/2026
New NVRT-driven workflow enables on-demand traffic mirroring and guided troubleshooting for AV teams, integrators, and support organizations ahead of InfoComm 2...
18/06/2026
At InfoComm 2026, Mavis announced a major update to Mavis Studio, its live production app for the iPad, with new features designed to make professional AV produ...
18/06/2026
Transaction Positions Harmonic as a Pure-Play Broadband Company
Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT), the worldwide leader in virtualized broadband solutions, today a...
18/06/2026
ACT Entertainment and NETGEAR have announced a strategic partnership that establishes verified interoperability between NETGEAR Switches and key technologies fr...
18/06/2026
IBC2026 is set to bring the global media, entertainment and technology community together at the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September, enabling industry players f...
18/06/2026
Pliant Technologies is proud to introduce CrewCom Flex , the world's first frameless matrix intercom system and the only complete matrix IP-based intercom s...
18/06/2026
The XR Sports Alliance (XRSA) has announced that a new cohort of members has joined the strategic initiative: ActionStreamer, Antigravity, Creative Artists Agen...
18/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
18/06/2026
Linda May Han Oh Receives Guggenheim Fellowship The Berklee professor, bassist, and composer will use the fellowship to debut Dreams of Knowing, an interdisci...
18/06/2026
Techtel delivers Haivision live streaming system for TAFE NSW St Leonards, enabl...
18/06/2026
New study reveals 10 hidden data drainers costing Brits hundreds abroad - and the holiday hotspots where you could get rinsed the mostThursday 18 June 2026
The...
18/06/2026
Thursday 18 June 2026
How to watch the 2026/27 Scottish Premiership season on Sky Sports
Which matches are Sky Sports showing on the 2026/27 Scottish Premiers...
18/06/2026
Thursday 18 June 2026
Sky Sale: Latest deals now on, with discounts on iPhone Air & 2.5Gbps speeds
The latest deals have dropped from Sky Mobile, the award-wi...
18/06/2026
FOX Advertising and Toonstar Team to Create New Opportunities for Brands in Digi...
18/06/2026
Arqiva's Crawley Court and Chalfont Grove teleports re-certified at highest World Teleport Association standard
18 June 2026, Winchester, UK - Arqiva, the ...
18/06/2026
Apple today announced changes impacting iOS apps in Brazil that reflect a recent agreement with Brazil's competition regulator, the Conselho Administrativo ...
18/06/2026
Play favorite titles from popular game libraries, keep progress synced and jump ...
18/06/2026
The digital era gave the advertising and marketing industry speed; the AI era is giving it autonomous operations.
For companies building next-generation techn...
17/06/2026
EVS has announced it has received the EcoVadis Gold Medal for sustainability performance, ranking among the top 5% of companies globally in the Technology/Mid-S...
17/06/2026
Chyron has released Weather 2.4, an update to its weather suite for broadcasters and meteorologists. The release focuses on enhancements to the DataFlow module,...
17/06/2026
VSiN, The Sports Betting Network, has announced the launch of Best Bets TV, a free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel. The 24/7 channel is currently avail...
17/06/2026
DAZN's Team Whistle and Snap Inc. have announced a creator program centered ...
17/06/2026
LiveU is providing video transmission technology for broadcasters, production companies, and public safety agencies across North America's busy Summer of So...
17/06/2026
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) has announced that Laurens Grant and Jacob Ullman have joined its Board of Directors. Chief of Staf...