TRANSCRIPT - 2020 STANLEY CUP QUALIFIERS - NBC Sports Pressbox
NBC's producer answers questions
SAM FLOOD: We are very excited about this opportunity to cover one of the greatest spectacles in sports, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and this unique way and the wonderful plan that Gary Bettman and the NHL have put together to allow this season to continue.
The effort that they have put into creating the two bubble cities and creating an opportunity for the season to come to its rightful conclusion with the raising of the Stanley Cup, big tip of the cap to Gary and Bill Daly and the rest of the league leadership. They have done a wonderful job.
Our job now is to tell this great story and to let the world know how much fun it’s going to be to have these teams battling it out inside these buildings.
And with the two locations in Toronto and Edmonton, I will just give you a quick overview of how we are doing this. For the first time ever, there will be a host feed from each building, so in Edmonton, Rogers will produce the host feed that other broadcasters, particularly through the first round, will lay their own commentary on top of.
And in Toronto, we’ve got some NBC producers and directors who will be producing the host feed from there, and back in our Stamford building, we will be adding commentary, graphics and unique elements that make it an NBC show. So we will be doing that to both the feed coming out of Toronto and the host feed coming out of Edmonton.
And then in terms of our announcers, we’ve got them spread around. We have got talent on site in Toronto, Pierre McGuire is about to arrive in Edmonton. Doc Emrick has got the best studio ever created outside Detroit. We can’t tell you the exact location; that remains secret. Stamford will have the core of our group, play-by-play and game analysts which will be calling some of the early games from there.
Eventually the majority of the calls will come from inside the buildings. We will have a complete broadcast team in Toronto. We’ve got Gord Miller there. John Forslund is on site there. Mike Milbury is traveling in, and he will be on site in Toronto inside the bubble, as will Brian Boucher, and Brian will be inside the glass for a number of games.
We consider it similar to an Olympic experience; that you’re all-in. This is a little bit longer than the 17 or 16 days of an Olympics, but the talent group and the production team is ready for an incredible job experience.
Once the second round of the playoffs ends and the entire event moves to Edmonton for the conference finals and finals, we will park a truck from NBC Sports next to the Rogers host feed and supplement that coverage and originate the entire telecast from out of Rogers Place out there in Edmonton.
I know everyone is going to ask about audio, so I’ll get ahead of that. The audio, we will be experimenting as we progress. We think there is incredible sound inside the glass around the boards of a hockey rink. We think there’s some colorful language, so the NHL has decided to rightfully put the games on a five-second delay.
But we will be taking advantage of all that incredible audio that comes with hockey; and probably have learned an awful lot watching the Stadium Series and Winter Classic Games with the ice surface isolated from the fans. We realize there’s some unique audio we can play with during that, and that gives us a good test of what we can get out of these games.
So the enhanced audio from inside the glass can be supplemented by some audio EA SPORTS has that we will mix in as needed. But we are going to really test and find out what the best balance is and what the best experience is for the viewers as we evolve through this.
Visually, we have got a lot of cameras in these host feeds. There will be up to 30 cameras including a really cool JitaCam that hangs beneath the scoreboard at center ice and gives you a 360-degree view. It can swoop in behind the power play, and there’s nothing better than to look at that top of the point position of the power position, and looking in at the goalie, trying to figure out where the puck is going to go in the net. We think that it will be a unique way to look at certain part of the game, and it will also be a fun camera to use in transition.
So our directors are excited to have that opportunity to execute with this JitaCam; that along with the audio, and along with what Steve Mayer and the NHL group has done to turn these hockey arenas, which are usually filled with 18- to 20,000 screaming, lunatic passionate hockey fans, they have created a set and a content and a structure that’s going to have a feel for each team that’s playing in the game.
The audio in terms of PA and in terms of music on goals, the celebrations, will make you feel like you’re in the building of a home team that’s just scored. So hats off to Steve and his team for making the buildings look remarkable.
