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...
18/05/2026
Despite a bumpy start to the year, the provider of event-production support and ...
18/05/2026
Daktronics has partnered with the University of North Carolina to manufacture and install 11 LED displays totaling more than 10,000 square feet and more than 14...
18/05/2026
CBS LA has announced a multi-year partnership with the Los Angeles Rams, covering exclusive local broadcasts of Rams preseason games, weekly year-round programm...
18/05/2026
Skyline Communications has announced an integration between its DataMiner xOps p...
18/05/2026
eCLUTCH, the hybrid esports platform powered by iKOMG, has announced an expansion of its distribution across Europe, MENA, Africa, and Asia, along with new cont...
18/05/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
18/05/2026
With 22 games this season, the production team looks forward to tweaking and enhancing the coverage
After 8,660 days off the air, the WNBA returned to NBC yest...
18/05/2026
(L-R) Midori Francis and Natalie Erika James attend the Saccharine premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Ray Theatre on January 22, 2026, in ...
18/05/2026
Last night, the Spotify Podcast Awards in Mexico returned to the country's capital. Now in its second year, the evening honors creators whose voices are hel...
18/05/2026
ZEN-Core synth goes mobile
Roland's powerful ZEN-Core software synthesizer has just been introduced to the iPad, offering a convenient entry point into ...
18/05/2026
Versatile new limiter plug-in announced
Based in Sheffield, UK, fedDSP offer a range of plug-ins that span the music production, live sound and high-end med...
18/05/2026
A new use for convolution?
Viiri Audio's debut plug-in aims to do something a little different with convolution processing, allowing users to adjust all...
18/05/2026
Delta Goodrem shines for SBS as more than 3.27 million Australians tune in for E...
18/05/2026
The Australian Defence Force uses L3Harris T4 and T7 robots for explosive ordnan...
18/05/2026
Continued investment across Europe and Germany is expanding local teams and improving access to stock, regional expertise, and specialist broadcast support.
CV...
18/05/2026
18 May 2026
Dubai and New York, May 18, 2026 - VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON), a glob...
18/05/2026
Monday 18 May 2026
Sky News offers ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes for just...
18/05/2026
Comscore March 2026 Consumer AI Chatbot Usage Rankings Show Claude Gaining Share OpenAI's ChatGPT maintains lead while Anthropic's Claude continues to c...
17/05/2026
Delta Goodrem's Eurovision Eclipse marks end of a stellar run
17 May, 2026
Media releases
Bulgaria wins Eurovision 2026
Relive every spellbinding mome...
17/05/2026
Back to All News
Oasis Premieres on Netflix June 19
Entertainment
17 May 2026
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Summer, sunshine, the beach, parties. T...
16/05/2026
Helps to deliver a clean, balanced midrange
Developed alongside Newfangled Audio, the latest plug-in in Eventide's software collection has been designed...
16/05/2026
Brings onboard stem rendering to RANE System One
Engine DJ have just released Engine DJ 5.0, a free update for their Engine DJ OS embedded hardware and Engi...
16/05/2026
Boris FX Continuum Pairs AI Precision and Advanced Creative Controls
Jessie Electa Petrov May 16, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic de...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
15/05/2026
Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC, in partnership with RAVE Foundation an...
15/05/2026
Dan Brumm has served as sound designer on Bluey, the Australian children's t...
15/05/2026
The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure Incorporated are accepting applications for the 6th annual Mark Brunner Professional Audio Schola...
15/05/2026
Netflix has announced an expanded NFL schedule for 2026 and beyond under a four-year partnership extension with the NFL through the 2029-30 season. Each season,...
15/05/2026
Ateme is supporting TVRI (Televisi Republik Indonesia) with a contribution and d...
15/05/2026
Concacaf has announced the launch of a new website and mobile app built on Deltatre's FORGE platform. Concacaf.com and the mobile app, available on iOS and ...
15/05/2026
Eutelsat has announced the launch of QBC Business Economic Channel by Qatar Media Corporation, broadcasting in 4K/UHD via Eutelsat's 7/8 West video neighbo...
15/05/2026
Major League Soccer has announced four original content series timed to the 2026...
15/05/2026
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has announced it will exhibit and present at InfoComm 2026, taking place June 13-19 at the Las Vegas Convention Cente...
15/05/2026
InfoComm 2026 will take place June 13-19 (exhibits June 17-19) at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The show will include sessions and exhibits covering broadcas...
15/05/2026
Tracy McGrady's Ones Basketball League (OBL) and FuboTV Inc. have announced ...
15/05/2026
Disguise has partnered with Creative Technology (CT) to deliver visual playback ...
15/05/2026
Sony Electronics has announced two new products for professional imaging: the Alpha 7R VI full-frame mirrorless camera and the FE 100-400mm F4.5 GM OSS super-te...
15/05/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
15/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
15/05/2026
For sports organizations, the most valuable assets are often the most sensitive:...
15/05/2026
The NFL's broadcast partners released their 2026 regular season schedules ye...
15/05/2026
Besides drawing on experience with boxing, the production integrates specialty c...
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 
