The Pittsburgh Penguins coaching staff uses an iPad during a game against the Nashville Predators in the 2017 NHL Stanley Cup Final. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
The NHL is bringing real-time, on-ice analytics to every club’s bench starting soon after the All-Star game.
The league has teamed up with SAP and expanded its partnership with Apple to arm all teams with iPads that will be fed dozens of real-time statistics about each game.
The plan builds on the NHL’s test during the 2017 playoff season, in which it provided teams with three iPad Pros that generated real-time video highlights. That pilot program was then expanded league-wide for the 2017-18 season. Teams will now get a fourth iPad that will complement existing on-bench video to help coaches make decisions on the fly in a game without needing stoppages.
“It became clear there were certain analytics and data points they wanted to have to complement the video,” said David Lehanski, the NHL’s senior vice president of business development and innovation. “And so we set out with Apple and SAP to design and build an app for the coaches that would give them real-time data on the benches.”
The NHL met with a number of teams individually and another 15 at last year’s draft to get their input on the types of data points coaches and players might find most useful during live game scenarios. When the iPads officially hit benches shortly after the Jan. 26 All-Star game, coaches will have access to more than 30 on-ice statistics, ranging from time-on-ice to face-off success rates by zone and player.
The coaching insights app, powered by SAP’s HANA cloud infrastructure, can also be customized based on the types of data points coaches find most useful. All of the information will be presented in an easy to understand graphical display. For example, if a player exceeds the amount of time on ice that a coach had planned, the graphic will automatically turn red.
A deeper dive into the data will unveil a host of game and player statistics that could expand beyond the initial 30 insights, including as shot attempts, unblocked shot attempts, and the success rates of forehand and backhand shots in shootouts.
At first, the insights app will be offered on a separate iPad to the three video highlight iPads, so as not to disturb the workflow of teams. But the SAP experience has been designed to be integrated with video if the league and teams choose to do so.
What’s more, the app will eventually be integrated with the puck and player tracking technology that the league is in the midst of testing. While current SAP insights are being manually input by NHL officials at a rate of about 350 events per game, RFID chips embedded into NHL pucks and player shoulder pads can collect league data at a rate of 180 times a second, potentially increasing the amount of per-game events to 10,000. This could vastly expand the use of real-time on-bench analytics.
“The NHL is excited about introducing technology in new and exciting ways,” said Robert Rob Bendl, SAP North America’s vice president of strategic customers and innovative business solutions. “We look at this as a solution that will be foundational. We’re excited that this platform will allow them to grow and expand as additional analytics are available through puck and player tracking.”
The way teams use the iPads is proprietary and is not reviewed by the league. But many coaches have already highlighted the benefits of using on-bench video. After the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2017, head coach Mike Sullivan touted live video highlights as a tool to his team’s success. The NHL is eager to see how its clubs will supplement that video with real-time statistics to make quick decisions.
“We know enough to know [puck and player tracking] will be a major addition to this solution and something the teams are really going to use,” said Lehanski.
