Despite NHL Pause, New Jersey Devils Go Above and Beyond With Live Draft Lottery Coverage, NHL 20 Streams Working from home, the franchise pressed reset on its video workflows to serve fans in new ways By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Monday, July 13, 2020 - 2:49 pm
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When the NHL truncated its regular season in mid March as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, not much was expected from the New Jersey Devils. The team sat in last place in the Metropolitan Division with only a handful of games left on the schedule. It would have been particularly easy to roll over, write off the year, and move on to offseason planning. But that's not how this franchise's internal video-production and content teams roll.
Live video programming for the New Jersey Devils' digital and social platforms is produced using technology set up in the home of Senior Manager, Scoreboard and Live Production, Joe Kuchie.
The team, which is owned by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), quickly turned around a brand-new content calendar designed to both entertain fans and offer value to corporate partners, all powered by a new work-from-home production model.
At the Devils, we try to prepare for the unexpected, says Chris Wescott, manager, content, New Jersey Devils. In this digital world, we have the ability to go remote pretty much on command. It was relatively easy for us.
Conveniently, the company had begun researching and planning for a more-remote office workflow for the future. According to Jillian Frechette, SVP, marketing, New Jersey Devils and Newark's Prudential Center, that work had begun even before the coronavirus appeared on the country's radar.
The technological onus in setting the franchise up for success fell to Devils Senior Manager, Scoreboard and Live Production, Joe Kuchie and his team. Unable to work from either the club's new digital content studio or the Prudential Center's in-venue control room, a shift to an actual at-home model needed to happen quickly.
There have been so many advancements in technology over the last couple of months, says Kuchie. Vendors are coming out with new ways to engage with fans, and, while it's great to have now, when things go into the new normal,' there's no reason we won't be able to use this technology moving forward.
While the club has turned around a slew of intriguing and engaging video content over the past few months, two pillars of live content have proved praise-worthy: a live show surrounding the NHL Draft Lottery and a series of NHL 20 streams re-creating the live game experience.
Anything Can Happen' on Draft Lottery Night
For a team like the Devils and others across the NHL who wouldn't be involved in the league's restart (the puck is now slated to drop on Aug. 1), the announcement of the NFL Draft Lottery on June 26 was the first big hockey moment on the schedule since mid March. It immediately became the focus of the club's content-creation and sponsor-obligation efforts.
We have a philosophy at the Devils that we're big on our hockey moments, says Frechette. We want to celebrate our hockey moments; we want to amplify them. [The] Draft Lottery, for a lot of teams, is just another day on the calendar, but, for us, it was a really big deal, and we wanted to set the stage for what we hope to deliver when [the NHL] Draft rolls around in the fall.
The Devils' efforts on Draft Lottery night included a 30-minute preshow exclusive for premium fans who are members of the team's The Black and Red club. That preshow offered interviews with famous alums like Martin Brodeur and Chico Resch, as well as 2019's first-overall Draft pick Jack Hughes. At 8 p.m. ET, the show went live across all platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the team's website and mobile app.
According to HBSE, the show - which was fittingly sponsored by the New Jersey Lottery - garnered more than 1.4 million social impressions and more than 17,000 live viewers across all platforms. An additional 1,000+ viewers took part in an exclusive members-only live pre-event show. All in all, the Devils were tops among all lottery-eligible clubs in social-brand mentions the night of the Lottery, and the production registered an 86% positivity score on HBSE's social-listening analytics tools.
In a time of so much uncertainty, to have that certainty with a hockey moment and an event for us was refreshing. It was go time, let's make the best of it. Joe's team and our content team worked hand in hand on multiple ideas before settling on a collaborative effort that was going to be unlike anything NHL teams were doing at the time.
To pull it off, Kuchie and his production team leveraging a live-video infrastructure built specifically for the club's new work-from-home mandate; a workflow, mind you, that leverages very little of the Devils' control room at Prudential Center.
The show was produced through StreamYard's StreamYard Studio product, which allowed Kuchie to have full control over the broadcast center, be able to switch in a live environment, and add custom backgrounds and sponsor branding, all while maintaining open communication with hosts live on-air and guests preparing to join the broadcast.
Hosts Matt Loughlin, Amanda Stein, and Wescott, as well as any guests that appeared on-air, received a private link via StreamYard that ushered them into a virtual studio, where Kuchie could approve their video and audio outputs before placing them in the live show. On the way out, StreamYard also produced custom RTMP links to allow broadcast of the show on all Devils digital and social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the team's website, and its mobile app.
It was very convenient for me
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Despite NHL Pause, New Jersey Devils Go Above and Beyond With Live Draft Lottery Coverage, NHL 20 Streams Working from home, the franchise pressed reset on its video workflows to serve fans in new ways By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
