NHL, meet Technology and Technology, meet The National Hockey League. 

Born out of an idea some four years ago, The NHL announced on April 6th that, in partnership with Verizon, it had opened its first Innovation Lab inside Prudential Center. According to Sean Williams, Vice President, Innovation – Technology Partnerships at The NHL, the purpose of the lab is to “allow us to refine technologies so that they can get closer to the game, both at home, over the broadcast, on other digital forms and then also to alleviate any issues that we have in venues at the actual arena.”

Blittner’s Blue Line chatted with Williams on Tuesday, April 14th, to dive deeper into this new technological frontier that The League is looking to tackle.

The first order of business is to determine how this new Innovation Lab will/can affect the fans. “So there’s a lot,” Williams began. “But to take current situations and current things that we’re testing and I know this was covered in some of the covered stories, but things like, we would, we’d look at building clocks into the actual dasher boards, as well as LED lighting systems into the actual glass. Those could help the players and the coaches and the officials on the ice, not only knowing how much time is left in a power-play, but also if the other team challenges the call on the ice. 

“There could be a lighting system that notifies not just the officials, but also the fans (that) there’s a challenge, ’cause, sometimes, when you’re in a venue, you don’t know why there’s this additional TV timeout, or why the TV timeout is taking longer than it normally does? To be honest, some of the clubs and some of the venue operations are very good at announcing a coach’s challenge (and) who’s doing the coach’s challenge. 

“But all that takes time. Whereas, if we had a lighting and a timing system that was standardized and rolled out to every single arena, there could be visual cues. Like, let’s say if there’s a coach’s challenge, that actual bench lights up with like a green LED ribbon and that same ribbon is noted in other points on the ice. So, that’s just one example of many technologies that we’re looking at.”

Okay, so that could be really helpful in terms of in-arena experience. After all, we all know how often the ice officials’ microphones can cut out, meaning that nobody hears what the actual announcement or call is. So this LED lighting system would be a huge improvement. 

But there’s certainly more to this new Innovation Lab than just lighting and announcement awareness. However, first, let’s dig a little more into the backstory of how this came to be and why it’s at Prudential Center instead of, let’s say, MSG or UBS Arena. 

“I think the concept goes back about four years and we started about three years ago,” Williams explained. “The key component of the current lab location is having the sheet of ice that is a practice sheet of ice. That is the key requirement out of all of our list of requirements. The main priority was to have a true, authentic testing environment that replicates what we have in an arena today. 

“To be candid, we were kind of already using Prudential Center as a testing space, but this is a more formalized approach, more formalized partnership and we’re very fortunate and very lucky to have Verizon join us in this partnership. Verizon not only being a league sponsor, but also a Devil sponsor. 

“So there’s some unity there relative to being able to have branded moments both with the Devils and The NHL. But, again, coming up full circle, the key was to have the practice sheet of ice and formalize everything so that we know that if we have something within side the lab that we are testing and trialing that it’s not that the New Jersey Devils are not getting a preview prior to any of the other NHL teams, so that we continue to uphold the integrity of the fact that The League may be refining something inside the Devils’ facility, but that it stays within our walls and is behind a locked key door. The Devils aren’t getting any type of early access to it.”

For anyone confused about the practice sheet of ice requirement, the Rangers have a separate practice facility up in Tarrytown and the Islanders practice at Northwell Health Ice Center. The Devils are the only one of the three local teams that have their practice area inside their own home arena. And if you’re wondering why The League wanted to use a local NHL team, it’s because they want it to be close to their Manhattan offices. Also, it allows them to use the lab for real-time testing when they are talking to various companies instead of having to schedule a trip to another part of the continent. 

“From our perspective, the stuff that we’re gonna tackle early on is very much the logical kind of fundamentals of making sure the operation is smoother,” Williams said. “Hence, that clock example that we called out. But the one thing that’s nice is, now that we have a lab and now that we have a sheet of ice that, within reason, with the Devils, we can use at a pretty regular cadence. 

“We can then turn to tech startups and new entrepreneurs who have these new devices that might be wearable technologies and we can invite them to come to the lab and we can try out their technologies in person. Whereas, before, we would either have to sit through a very fancy presentation and kind of take their word for their technology, or we have to go try to find ice somewhere and look to local youth rinks, which isn’t always ideal if you’re trying to especially get some type of skating coach from a team to check out a new Stride technology. 

“So, now we have our own space and again, within reason, we could bring that tech entrepreneurial company into the lab. We could bring it either ourselves or skating coaches or even athletes to come in and try out the technology and use it as like a true testing ground to understand if something is working the way it’s being kind of sold to us, or are there flaws within the technology that we can either refine in partnership with this startup or, maybe ask them to go back to the drawing.”

It’s not just new technology The League is looking to gain out of this Innovation Lab, either. There are also new measurements it’s looking to bring in, as well as new ways for fans to consume hockey content. 

“We see a world, fairly soon in the future, where fans will be more able to customize the content they’re watching,” Williams explained. “That could be through the broadcast, or that could be through some other form or medium, either a mobile experience or a digital experience. 

“But the idea being, there are certain fans who like to watch a hockey game in it’s traditional format and then there’s a new, kind of emerging fan group, especially on the younger side, who would like to have certain stats overlays or would like to have certain player overlays and be notified whenever their player is on the ice and understanding, with certain graphic treatments. And they could turn those experiences on and off as they see fit. We would like to get to that point, that’s kind of a north star. 

“To get there, we have to continue to refine our current tracking technologies and we’ve come a long way. But, to kind of go into the weeds a little bit, we have two different tracking systems that are live today. We have our puck and player tracking system that’s anywhere from five to six years old and that’s a single point tracking system that’s tracking the X, Y, Z coordinates of the puck, as well as the players on the ice. And then we have our newer system that’s been in production for about a year, this current hockey season in particular, through the Sony Hawk-Eye optical tracking system. And so, that is using the tracking technology that’s used across many other professional sports, which is optically looking at the humans on the ice and tracking their skeletal movements. 

“Then, we can take that skeletal movement and either refine it with advanced stats and analytics, or we can create things much like we just did with our Inside Out broadcast with ESPN and Disney. That ESPN broadcast is a good example of a future we’d like to get to, where maybe a traditionalist sitting on the couch is watching the game in its traditional fashion, with the camera one viewing experience, but maybe the younger audience sitting on the couch next to them is watching a different experience on a mobile device that has some type of animation in a three-dimensional world and maybe that three-dimensional world is customizable. 

“So again, there’s a lot to unpack, but we need to continue to refine our current tracking technologies to make it better, to make it more robust and to make it more efficient in order to find the economies to scale, to roll out this type of custom content.”

That certainly is a lot to unpack. But it all boils down to being as precise as possible and as accurate as possible so that The League can best deliver its unique content across all platforms and to all groups. Plus, with more information, players, coaches, hockey operations staff, etc., they’ll all be able to improve how they go about the game. But, for now, it’s one step at a time with the new Innovation Lab. And soon enough, The NHL will be reaping the benefits of this new technology frontier. 

“The lab is something that we’re going to leverage in order to refine and test those intricate details. In the lab today and specifically the practice facility, we’ve already installed the Sony Hawk-Eye system and we’re spending (the) next couple of months, going into the off-season, as that being one of our top priorities to leverage the lab to test and refine their technologies…The more information and the more data we collect, the more accurate our systems will get.”

The game is evolving and The NHL is breaking new ground every day.