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 ...
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
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...
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...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
29/05/2026
At just 20 years old, Sean Melia from Summerhill Co. Meath has been revealed as the winner of Super Garden 2026. Sean is the youngest ever contestant and winner...
29/05/2026
Experimental HIV vaccine achieves a long-sought goal In a first for the field, all non-human primates given a new series of vaccines generated antibodies capabl...
28/05/2026
Thomsons Climate Crisis Toolkit is already being put to work, helping journalist...
28/05/2026
FOX Sports' MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy ...
28/05/2026
One of the most memorable postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
28/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most-decorated and most-watched pro...
28/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
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 
