An iPad used for video replays sits in the penalty box prior to a playoff game between the New York Rangers and the Ottawa Senators on May 2, 2017. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
As the new NHL season begins this week, technology continues to seep into the sport through everything from state-of-the-art coaching tools to century-old statistics. Here are the five most important technology storylines that will have the biggest impact on the 2017-2018 campaign NHL season:
1. Mid-game adjustments: There’s an app for that
After a successful pilot program of the in-game video review program during last spring’s playoffs — with the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins making particular use — the NHL has broadened the use of iBench to all teams and all regular season games. Each staff will have up to three iPad Pros running XOS Digital’s Thunder video product for adjustments between shifts rather than at intermissions.
2. The growth of sports science
The NHL is a few years into its so-called Analytics Revolution that has centered on performance data and game stats like Corsi, Fenwick and the like, but slowly the parallel field of sports science is growing, too. This knowledge base centers more on biometric data and, while the use of wearable tech is not currently permitted in games (see below), an increasing number of teams are using devices like those made by Catapult.
The Montreal Canadiens announced the launch of their department of sports science and performance last month. The Philadelphia Flyers hired Ben Peterson away from Catapult as their sports science director before the 2016-17 season. The Toronto Maple Leafs have had such a group in place since 2015. Those are just a few examples; several other teams have someone on their masthead as leading efforts in sports science or sports performance.
3. The NHL is on track for tracking
The World Cup of Hockey in 2016 featured NHL players and innovative tech, with Sportvision placing tracking chips in pucks and infrared tags on sweaters to help generate some novel data, building on a similar experiment at the 2015 NHL All-Star Game. While other leagues, such as Major League Baseball and the NBA, produce publicly available tracking stats, the NHL is pursuing its own solution for the unique challenges presented by its sport (the speed and collisions, for example) and by its price tag ($200 per puck chip).
“We continue to look at various player and puck tracking technologies,” Gary Meagher, the NHL’s executive vice-president of communications, told the Toronto Sun in an emailed statement. “We hope to do more testing in the next year with the goal of finding a scaleable, league-wide application.”
4. NHL.tv is now also NHL.tickets
Now two years since MLB Advanced Media began hosting and operating the NHL’s digital operations — which has subsequently been spun off into BAMTech Media — the league’s app continues to be upgraded. Fans not only can subscribe to stream all league games in HD quality at 60 frames per second (on mobile, too) but also an integration with Ticketmaster enables users to view, resell or share tickets directly through the app.
5. Centennial Stats
To commemorate its centennial, the NHL has digitized its entire statistical history following a six-year project with a collaboration from SAP, the official cloud service partner for the league. The NHL’s website now hosts 2.2 quadrillion possible statistical combinations and 15 million new player and game data points for the 7,623 players who have logged ice time in the 100 years of pro hockey. Box scores for all 55,461 regular-season and 4,292 playoff games are available, too.
