One of professional hockey’s most hated innovations, the glow puck, is making a comeback:
The company has developed new hockey pucks loaded with tracking chips and outfitted the players in the six-team tournament with sensors on their sweaters that track movement throughout the games. The sensors emit infrared signals that allow cameras circling Toronto’s Air Canada Centre to record data like the speed and trajectory of a shot, how fast and how far players skate, who is on the ice and the length of their shifts.
Sportvision had to develop new pucks to hold the sensors. To test them, the company shot the pucks out of a cannon at speeds up to 135 miles an hour, faster than the record 108.8 miles per hour shot by Boston defenseman Zdeno Chara in 2012.
First used during the 2015 All-Star skills competition and game, the sensors are getting their first real-game tryouts at the World Cup, which begins its final round Tuesday.
The sensors also allow Sportvision, which developed the computerized yellow first-down line used in NFL broadcasts and the virtual strike-zone shown in televised baseball games, to graphically enhance visuals for people watching on TV.
Broadcasters use the graphics to point out particularities about hockey that might get lost during games. For example, during a recent broadcast of a Team North America game against Team Finland, Canadian broadcaster Sportsnet showed a replay of goal by defenseman Colton Parayko. “It’s not how hard the shot is, it’s just where it gets to,” said the announcer, as the onscreen graphics traced with a red tail the arc of the shot from Parayko’s stick into the net, displaying the speed at a relatively modest 50 mph.
Hockey is the worst sport for TV precisely because you cannot follow the puck. I remember when many years ago the network that had the NHL contract used a blue glow on the puck. You could actually see where the puck went, but it was distracting, and hockey aficionados went BS crazy.
Hockey is a very good spectator sport in small arenas — think high school or college. Basketball is another good, small-arena sport.