The NHL is embedding technology into its pucks that will allow it to track movement on the ice at a rate of roughly 200 times a second, according to David Lehanski, the NHL’s senior vice president of business development and global partnerships.
The smart puck will aid in the league’s development of live data, which the NHL hopes to deploy across the league in a number of ways, ultimately enhancing the fan and broadcast experience, according to Lehanski, who spoke Monday at SAP’s inaugural North American Sports Forum.
The real-time data could be provided to coaches during games as an analytical tool, potentially embedded alongside the videos coaches currently receive on the bench via league-distributed iPads, according to Lehanski. The league is currently working with both Apple and SAP to do that. Further in the future, puck-produced live data might even be integrated with livestreams to assist with sports betting, something that Lehanski said the league would mostly likely power with SAP’s HANA system.
“There’s no doubt that [sports betting] will be a part of the fan experience almost across any touchpoint. Live streaming products will start to incorporate betting functionality. And today, the foundation for that experience is data,” said Lehanski. “Were seeing that 75 percent of all bets in sports now are in-game prop bets. The only way we can do that in a real-time manner is to be aggregating data and distributing it on a real-time basis with someone who can create odds and probabilities in real time and distribute that to the fan.”
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I honestly never thought that glowing Foxtracker thing was anywhere near as bad as it seemed like everyone else did. It doesn't really bother me and if it helps new people watch the sport, I always figured, go nuts.
I understand why people who don't watch hockey have trouble following the puck - if you watch a lot you instinctively know where it is from the camera position and from knowing what play makes sense, so you know where it's likely to go before it goes there. If you don't, well, there are a lot of plays where it's hidden by the boards, or could be masked by being on someone's stick.
Obviously HD has helped this a lot but I still hear this complaint from people, especially Americans, who don't follow hockey.
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The real-time data could be provided to coaches during games as an analytical tool, potentially embedded alongside the videos coaches currently receive on the bench via league-distributed iPads, according to Lehanski.
We lost the game but a deep dive on the (puck) stats really shows how much faster our shots were!
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This data should actually provide a better metric than shots attempted to provide who should win a game with luck removed.
Yep. If the NHL releases all the data, this likely makes corsi, fenwick and a bunch of other stats obsolete.
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I was initially joking about the Drone idea (I have been a vocal proponent for this on the other site for 2 years now) but I'm starting to think it's the actual future. Even last night a linesman got in the way of a puck that could have lead to an interesting play for the lightening. They're just so useless and in the way!
You'd still have to keep two "goon refs" who, in my envisionment, would sit in the penalty boxes between whistles and be released to break up plays whenever the whistle is blown. Otherwise, drone to drop the pucks, combination of tracking technology, in arena PA, and a situation room replete with video review would provide a much more official/ impartial reckoning of each game.
It's the future!
What's the state of sensor technology in terms of its precision to detect goal/no-goal situations?
I'm not convinced that sensors in the goal posts are accurate enough, given the speed at which the puck moves and the mobility of the entire net structure itself.
Goal lights are already there.
Put some sensors in the goal posts.
Light turns on if the puck is in.
Get it done already...
A few years ago, someone built a prototype that did just that. Except the goal lights were embedded in the posts themselves, so the whole goal mouth lit up red, which would be rather cool.
I don't know if it was accurate enough for the NHL's purposes – maybe that's why they didn't adopt it. But if you can track the location of the puck 200 times per second anywhere in the arena, you could presumably track it with accuracy in the centimetre range, which would be close enough to give an unambiguous determination when a goal was scored.
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NHL to incorporate puck tracking technology
