Today begins the official start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and while the Golden Knights won’t play until Monday, there are several games to keep your eyes on.
Vegas fans couldn’t get a true feeling of the NHL’s game presentation during Thursday night’s exhibition game against Arizona because the league used a fraction of what they have planned going forward.
We’re super excited about what we are going to be debuting and showing from Saturday all the way through the Stanley Cup Final. What you were seeing was probably five percent, ten percent of what you’re going to start to see on Saturday.- Steve Mayer, NHL Chief Content Officer
The NHL intends on making the television broadcast an experience for the viewing audience. They’ve added dozens of cameras for alternate views of the ice, creating a unique event, not just a typical hockey game.
Starting today, fans should keep their eyes open for some of the new additions the league will use throughout the entire postseason. They’re hoping fans will be entertained like they’re watching a movie or a television episode.
As a fan you’re not going to miss anything. Camera angles, the low angles, the replays, super slo-mo. There’s some really cool looks. The ability that we’ve had to really get inside of the game. It’s a made for television event. We don’t have fans here, so we essentially built a set. Every screen we’re going to highlight players. We’re going to highlight highlights, the history of the game, the statistics of the game. Visually I think you’re going to see things that you have never seen and probably never see again. -Steve Mayer
One of the newer gadgets the NHL will be using is the JitaCam, which is a mechanical camera on a large, 360-degree crane that can be positioned over the ice. The league has previously used the JitaCam at the All-Star game, but they plan on utilizing it much more since the arenas are empty.
Based on the fact that we just don’t have fans a lot of the ideas, and a lot of the things we’re doing are solely because of that… With no fans the ability to just put cameras where you want them because you’re not going to block a fan. To be able to put thirty foot high LED boards where fans would normally have been. To be able to put seat covers over seats, to take seats essentially out of play visually. To be able to put the amount of lighting that we’ve put into these buildings.-Steve Mayer
There is a slight issue with the new angles, effects, and views the NHL content department will display. Most will go away when fans are allowed back into arenas.
The JitaCam is right in the middle, if there were fans in the stands we’d get quite a few complaints… We can adjust as we go along as well in this new environment. What we start with we can keep getting better and better with every single game. So when we get to the Stanley Cup Final we have got the best telecast we’d could possibly have.- Steve Mayer
The league is apparently going all out for fans during this rare postseason. They’re not penny-pinching or trying to do more with less. The NHL’s intentions are to make the playoffs a one of a kind event. Not just for the fans but the players as well. They hope everyone will embrace the moment and chronicle this historic season.
Let’s pray it’s once in a lifetime, but because it’s a once in a lifetime it’s really up to all of us to document it and show it in a really unique way. Thirty years from now I think people are going to look back at this and go ‘what, really?’ and from everything from how the way it looks to how we’re presenting it is really meaningful.- Steve Mayer
Fans around the globe have been waiting months to watch their favorite teams compete in the playoffs, and the NHL hopes it’ll be the most memorable. So sit back in your comfy chair and enjoy the next couple of months of postseason hockey. For whatever we’re watching may end up changing the way we view sports in the future.
Tim
Has anyone else noticed the color and clarity of the broadcast is much better in Edmonton.
Walt T
As long as they don’t kneel down or show support for communist groups, I will enjoy the playoffs. If they pull the same nonsense as the NFL, MLB or NBA, the NHL will be dead to me as well even though hockey is the greatest love of my life other than my wife, children and grandchildren.
Doktor Hockey
Is the black equality cause a communist issue?
God of Hockey
too bad some people here like hockey duck live in a vacuum . A simple internet search will reveal the truth of the matter :
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a newly surfaced video from 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists” – making clear their movement’s ideological foundation, according to a report.
Cullors, 36, was the protégé of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization, and spent years absorbing the Marxist-Leninist ideology that shaped her worldview.
“The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers,” she said, referring to BLM co-founder Alicia Garza.
“We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk,” Cullors added in the interview with Jared Ball of The Real News Network.
While promoting her book “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” in 2018, Cullors described her introduction to and support for Marxist ideology.
She described to Democracy Now! how she became a trained organizer with the Labor/Community Strategy Center, which she called her “first political home” under the mentorship of Mann, its director, Breitbart reported.
The center, which describes its philosophy as “an urban experiment,” uses grassroots organization to “focus on Black and Latino communities with deep historical ties to the long history of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, pro-communist resistance to the US empire,” according to the outlet.
It also expresses its appreciation for the work of the US Communist Party, “especially Black communists,” as well as its support for “the great work of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, Young Lords, Brown Berets, and the great revolutionary rainbow experiments of the 1970s,” Breitbart reported.
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Doktor Hockey
All that bullshit you wrote DUD didn’t answer the simple question I asked: “Do YOU believe the black movement is communism”? Yes or no. Come on show some more of your stupidity, please!
Tim
In my opinion the part of the protest group that burns and loots these cities would it be fair to say they just don’t give a shit about America. People can bow down kneel your ass off but fortunately I was raised in a time when people respected the flag and our country. Those days are long gone.
LuvVGK
Dumba did that on Saturday – kneeled for the US national anthem, not the Canadian anthem. Later, he interviewed that he regretted not kneeling for the Canadian anthem. He didn’t kneel for the anthems yesterday, but showed support raising his fist for the BLM, which God of Hockey rightly explained are a Marxist group. The BLM is also funded in part by George Soros, a known anti-America billionaire. Interestingly, donations to the BLM go to a superpac ActBlue which then go to Thousand Currents, a group run by Susan Rosenberg, a convicted terrorist pardoned by Bill Clinton. If their riots and admitted Marxism are not enough, one of the prominent BLM leaders, Chris DeVries was arrested on 7/17/20 for child sexual abuse (like 6 counts of it), and another leader, Charles Wade, was arrested in 2016 for human trafficking and prostitution charges. The outcome there isn’t known but he was out on a 25K bail soon after his arrest. Matt Dumba was hoping more players would support him. Perhaps they know what’s going on with regard to the BLM.
All that aside, I would hope politics be kept out of the ice rink. IMHO, sports are an escape, a release, a triumph over our daily grind and to see the joy taken away is heartbreaking. Not everything needs to be a political platform.
Happy Commie
Hey, that’s a win-win for everybody. Jerks like you leave hockey fandom making it better for everyone, AND you get more time to crank it to Infowars, Tucker Carlson, OANN or whatever else misinforms your small world view. It’s great!
Notaqtard
Well, hopefully then seeing the “End Racism” graphics and the support for the BLM cause will in turn cause you racist pieces of trash to turn your attention elsewhere. Your internet BS is all you have. The world is leaving you behind.
Doktor Hockey
I absolutely agree “not”. The stuff these guys write is ridiculous. The 1000,s of people, black, white, all colors, that marched after that sickening video …. do they really think these people had ANY thought in their heads other than: “This has to stop”. As a 70 yr old white man, I am sickened and embarrassed how people of color have been treated in our country for so many years.