NHL Faceoff 2025: TNT Sports Goes Big in Vegas for Opener, Leans Into Multi-Feed Production Model for Regular Season

This will be TNT's second full season producing NHL games remotely from Techwood

TNT Sports will drop the puck on its fifth season of NHL coverage in style tomorrow with a live studio show from the Las Vegas Strip. The 90-minute NHL on TNT pregame show, which will begin at 6 p.m. ET, will be followed by a double-header featuring the Bruins at the Capitals at 7:30 p.m. and the Kings at the Golden Knights at 10 p.m.

Although TNT Sports has cultivated a Multi-Feed-Production (MFP) remote model for the majority of its NHL productions, both the studio show and the game in Vegas will be full onsite operations running out of NEP Supershooter 9 (A and B units) and Supershooter 33, respectively. The studio set will be located just outside T-Mobile Arena with lighting being handled by LDG (The Lighting Design Group).

The NHL on TNT crew – Wayne Gretzky, Paul Bissonnette, Liam McHugh, Anson Carter, and Henrik Lundqvist – are on hand in Vegas outside T-Mobile Arena.

“We couldn’t be more excited to start the NHL season,” says Chris Brown, VP, technology and operations, Warner Bros. Discovery. “Vegas is the perfect place to kick things off so we’re going big for Opening Night. There’s a lot going on for us right now, but everyone here [at TNT Sports] has risen to the occasion — engineering, operations, production, and everyone else. There’s a lot of moving pieces between NHL, MLB Postseason, and everything else going on, but I feel like we’re in a good rhythm at this point.”

Although TNT will have a significant onsite presence in Vegas on Wednesday, the bulk of its regular-season productions will continue to be MFP operations. Over the past two years, TNT Sports has refashioned its Techwood campus in Atlanta into a remote-production hub with a variety of control rooms for various levels of events.

After locating graphics and a couple of EVS replay operators at Techwood for its NHL production in 2023, TNT Sports went all-in on its MFP model last season. Although it also produces the bulk of its MLB regular-season broadcasts and other properties as MFPs, its NHL remote productions are unique.

“NHL is by far the most complex of our MFP productions,” Brown explains. “First of all, NHL has three super-slo-mo [cameras] as part of its base coverage, and, besides that, we have a huge number of signals going back and forth [between Techwood and the arena]. Plus, we have virtual graphics, the DED [digitally enhanced dasherboard], the virtual power-play clock, and [NHL EDGE] data from the league for pointers and so on. [Having] all those elements together in one [production] creates a lot of complexity.”

In the field, NEP Supershooter 62, 64, and 65 will join LMG MU28 in capturing the audio and video signals that are sent to Techwood to create the broadcast. Unlike in many other networks’ remote-production models, TNT Sports’ director and producer are onsite for these MFPs rather than in the remote-control room.

The NHL on TNT crew will bring a camera complement similar to that deployed in recent years. Of the six hard cameras and five handhelds (a mix of Sony HDC-3500’s and HDC-4300’s), three will be super-slo-mos (two running at 6X and one at 3X high speed). Four robos are also in the mix, along with two Dream Chip cameras (provided by the league) on the home and visitor benches.

With the NBA moving on to new rights partners this year, the NHL will be front and center for TNT Sports over the next eight months.

“While we don’t have the NBA this season,” says Brown, “we still owe the rest of our properties the same attention that they deserve, and we still have the same mandates in terms of quality of production. It’s about refocusing people’s attention and reallocating resources. At the end of the day, our job is to serve our production partners, and their job is to serve the fans. The mission doesn’t change, and we’re focused on the future.”

That future includes a regular-season schedule with its share of big stars and rivalries, with coverage on 13 Tuesday and 21 Wednesday nights. In addition, TNT Sports will present the annual Thanksgiving Showdown between the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins on Black Friday (Nov. 28), as well as the NHL Winter Classic on Jan. 2 with the back-to-back Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers hosting the Rangers.

Although those high-profile games are expected to be onsite productions, nearly all other NHL on TNT broadcasts this season will be MFPs. As the puck drops on the 2025-26 season, Brown says the rapid evolution of the broadcaster’s remote-production efforts since they began in 2023 has been nothing short of “astounding.”

“It has been a massive collaborative effort, with everyone working together just to get to this point,” he notes. “Today, our studio-engineering partners have an opportunity to touch remotes on a level they’ve never had before because, in the past, we just delivered the production to the doorstep. Now they’re in the middle of the action, and everyone is working as one cohesive unit. It has been pretty amazing to watch.”