NHL Puck Drop 2024: Season Kicks Off With Live 'NHL Global ...

Two-game series at O2 Arena will air in two dozen countries

After this weekend’s two games between the Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils at Prague’s O2 Arena, the Czech Republic’s capital and the stadium will have staged the second-most regular-season contests outside North America. It’s testament to hockey’s appeal in the region.

NHL VP, Broadcasting, Patrick Bither has witnessed that first-hand on several trips overseas. “The atmosphere in the arena, especially the O2 Arena — which is a great place not only to produce a game but to actually watch it live — is electric once the fans are inside,” he says. “They love hockey, they know hockey, and they love the NHL. We try to make that shine through as much as possible on the broadcast.”

The games, part of the NHL’s Global Series, kick off the league’s 2024-25 regular season and will air in about two dozen countries. Tonight’s matchup starts at 1 p.m. ET; Saturday’s game, at 10 a.m.

Bither, who recalls seeing every NHL team represented on fans’ jerseys two years ago in Prague, confirmed that the league will incorporate its EDGE stats and puck/player-tracking system into the world feed, marking the first time the technology will be used for an international game.

NHL Global Series games will be produced from Nova Sport production trucks onsite.

Meanwhile, three sets of TV announcers will be onsite at the O2 Arena for the games. Play-by-play announcer E.J. Hradek and analyst Kevin Weekes will call the world-feed show on NHL Network. Nova Sport, which supplies the production trucks and onsite crew, will have its own domestic-TV broadcast setup onsite. It will take the world-feed line cut and supplement it with its own onsite studio show, Bither explains. In addition, the game will air on Slovakia’s Markiza television channel.

Both the Devils and the Sabres will have onsite radio announcers, as well as studio announcers, and the games will be broadcast in their respective local markets on MSG, which will take the world-feed line cut and integrate its own line graphics and scorebug. Sportsnet will air the NHL Network show in Canada.

Because the O2 Arena doesn’t have a traditional press box, the NHL has blocked off multiple rows of seats at center ice and created tables for announcers. Although the makeshift setup may seem to be a challenge, Bither says, the announcers consider it a benefit because they’re even closer to live game action.

The NHL is working with digital-media–design firm Mixon Digital on in-venue graphics, which can be created in both the native language and English. Mobilelinks, which covers the Nordic region, is an NHL transmission partner, along with PSSI and Telstra.

NHL Productions will create the replay wipe and open animation for the world-feed broadcast, and Sportsnet will assist with graphic creation. A vendor called Stripe will help integrate the clock and scorebug into the broadcast.

The NHL’s EDGE stats and player/puck tracking system will be integrated into the world feed.

On the technology front, a complement of 16 cameras — including handheld, fixed, robotics, and POV — will be deployed, according to Bither. Four super-slo-mo cameras also will be available. The integration of EDGE stats and player/puck tracking will involve two cameras, and a handheld camera will be situated between the Sabres and Devils benches.

The scheduling of multiple entertainment acts at the O2 Arena around the NHL’s two-game series made it challenging to incorporate different bells and whistles into the production. “To the point of trying to do a lot of unique, crazy specialty cameras, that didn’t help us,” says Dan O’Neill, SVP, Arena Operations, NHL. “So we toned it down a little bit because of the timeline of loading into the production.”

When asked what they’ve learned about broadcasting from the NHL Global Series, O’Neill and Bither have complementary perspectives.

“Everybody handles things a little differently in how their departments work,” O’Neill says. “Some are more siloed. They traditionally don’t have the tech manager, tech producer, that we normally have in the States. They let the engineer and the truck be that driver.”

Says Bither, “Depending on the country, the market, the rightsholder, everyone has a different way of producing hockey and sports in general. You learn a lot going to these different markets and working with folks. There’s no right or wrong way. You learn to adjust your own thinking in terms of the production side.”