NHL Puck Drop 2024: NHL on TNT Skates Into Year 4 With New NEP Supershooter 63 on the Road, Multi-Feed Production at Home

Remote EVS playout is a new part of the operation in Techwood

The 2024-25 NHL season is shaping up to be a pivotal year in the renewed history of hockey on TNT Sports. The network will televise its second Stanley Cup Final in four years, showcase first-time champion Florida Panthers four times and upstart Utah Hockey Club three times, present three games of the new NHL 4 Nations Face-Off Tournament in February, and, more important, execute its entire broadcast schedule via the new NEP Supershooter 63 mobile unit onsite and Multi-Feed Production (MFP) from Atlanta.

“This show has a ton of complexities and a lot of resources that make it challenging,” says Chris Brown, VP, technology and operations, Warner Bros. Discovery. “We’re super-excited to get together with NEP and launch this production model.”

Last year, NHL on TNT made strides in its remote-production workflow by integrating graphics from its Techwood facility. This season, the network is going full bore on the remote front, with MFPs leveraging NEP’s new mobile unit, which was unofficially launched during the NHL preseason. The official launch for the regular season will be at tomorrow night’s doubleheader featuring the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins at 7:30 p.m. ET and the Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights at 10 p.m. Given all the elements of the broadcast operation, including the league’s digitally enhanced dasherboards and real-time information from SMT, the NHL on TNT crew is responsible for a lot of deliverables. Some responsibilities will be assisted by a recent addition to the production plan: remotely operated replay.

“We’ve added EVS playout from our remote-operation center that’s dedicated to these productions,” says Brown. “We launched part of this during the preseason with great success, but we’ll need all our stations for the season opener.”

On the production side, TNT Sports is aiming to deploy its standard camera complement, used throughout its previous three seasons. The nationally televised broadcasts will include six hard cameras (four Sony HDC-3500’s and two Sony HDC-4300’s at 6X super-slow-motion), five handhelds (three Sony HDC-3500’s and two Sony HDC-4300’s at 6X super-slow-motion), four robos (three Sony P50’s and a Sony P130), and two Dream Chip cameras on the home and visitor benches.

“The goal,” says Brown, “is to stick to what our fans have come to expect from our telecasts.”

NEP TS2 mobile unit, one of the network’s two mobile units last year, will make an appearance at multiple games this year. With two trucks for 62 regular-season games, the network is fully able to incorporate the influx of remote workflows despite the large number of games on both coasts. In its fourth season of NHL action, the crew’s collaboration with external broadcast partners is essential.

“I feel like the relationship between our group, the NHL, and the league’s partners has gotten better, which helps with communication and forming a stronger [production and operational] foundation,” says Brown. “This strong foundation has allowed us to move to these remote-production workflows.”

There also has been internal growth within the network. As the industry and the way games are produced continue to change and remote production shifts from atypical to traditional, the crew has refined its workflows to create greater efficiencies.

“Our productions have adapted on the operations side, and we’ve adapted on the engineering side as well,” says Brown. “One of the biggest learning curves is changing the mindset of a facility engineer who normally works on a studio show and having them see how a live game is produced. This allows them to jump in and understand how to put this broadcast together.”

After Wednesday night’s doubleheader, NHL on TNT will produce four more games in October: a doubleheader on Oct. 16 with Buffalo Sabres vs. Pittsburgh Penguins at 7 p.m. and Boston Bruins vs. Colorado Avalanche at 9:30 p.m., the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Washington Capitals on Oct. 23 at 7:30 p.m., and the Vegas Golden Knights vs. Los Angeles Kings on Oct. 30 at 10 p.m.