NHL Playoffs 2025: TNT Sports Hits the Road for Onsite Productions With Mobile Units from NEP Group, Game Creek Video

NHL Playoffs 2025: TNT Sports Hits the Road for Onsite Productions With Mobile Units from NEP Group, Game Creek Video Deployed during the regular season, new NEP Supershooter 64 will be available if needed By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor

Friday, April 18, 2025 - 7:00 am

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Whether it's larger beards on player faces, tightening up the defensive ranks to take care of business at home, or the swirling of rally towels by a sold-out crowd, the start of the NHL playoffs on Saturday, April 19 is a pivotal day for hockey fans. On the production side, TNT Sports will skate its first onsite shift on the way to the Stanley Cup Final. The broadcaster has relied mainly on remote productions from its upgraded Techwood facility for NHL on TNT regular-season games, but, for the postseason, it will be going the traditional route with crews in the broadcast compound.

We lean heavily on onsite productions in the playoffs, says Chris Brown, VP, technology and operations, TNT Sports. There will be occasions where we employ a variety of remote workflows, but we let the circumstances help dictate that part.

Shift to Onsite: Remote Graphics in Atlanta Augments the In-Person Effort After the Remote Operations Center (ROC) opened at TNT Sports headquarters in Atlanta, the broadcaster kicked its Multi-Feed Productions (MFPs) into overdrive. It deployed offsite graphics and replay for some productions of other sports leagues, but the NHL on TNT opted for a completely remote production, and the crew became accustomed to operating from the comfort of Techwood. For the postseason, though, only graphics will be handled remotely, which means that production and technical teams are headed to various NHL arenas.

Similar to the NBA Playoffs, says Brown, we will have remote graphics at nearly every game in the early rounds. It will be a little bit of a mixed bag, drawing off everything we learned through the season.

Familiarity with the venues will come into play, for both the remote workflows and the onsite operation. For the remotely integrated workflows, TNT Sports will deploy a combination of solutions from Haivision and Appear to get feeds from the compound to Atlanta. The games will be serviced by a fleet of NEP mobile units: TS2, ND6, EN2, and Supershooter 6. In case of emergency, NEP Supershooter 64 and 65 will be available.

In addition, Game Creek Video production trucks - 79, Justice, Larkspur, Gemini, and Victory - dedicated to ESPN's portion of the NHL playoffs also will be in play if needed.

New Truck in the Mix: TNT Sports Ends Regular Season With NEP Supershooter 64 Supershooter 64, which NEP Group unveiled last month, has been a major player for NHL on TNT, serving as the broadcaster's go-to mobile unit for the last couple of months of the regular season. Reflecting on the MFPs, Brown notes a strategy that not many other remote productions focus on: having the producer and director in the mobile unit instead of in a remote control room. There was a strong editorial desire to keep both of these positions where the content, the on-air talent, and the action was, he says. Our producer and director were able to have coaches, player, and officials meetings, sit and watch practices to understand which players were healthy, and other things they wouldn't be able to do if they were working remotely.

From a purely technological perspective, Supershooter 64 was more than enough to handle the workflows of each NHL game. The brand-new mobile unit not only handled the MFPs with precision and reliability but also enabled the production team to tell the stories of each team and game to a nationwide viewing audience. Supershooter 64 was designed around the idea of having your production personnel onsite, Brown points out. Feedback from those broadcasts was very strong.

Eyes on the Stanley Cup: Studio Show Heads to the Arena; Tech Gets an Upgrade As on TNT Sports' NBA productions, each successive round of the NHL postseason will get an upgrade in the camera complement and game-day technologies. The biggest uptick, of course, will be for the Stanley Cup Final. With no other hockey games on the schedule and the eyes of the hocky world fixed on the series, the broadcaster's energies and workflows will be focused on the respective venues.

From a production point of view, the broadcasts will be improved with the inclusion of each game's NHL on TNT pre/postgame and intermission show. Led by host Liam McHugh and joined by analysts Wayne Gretzky, Henrik Lundqvist, Paul Bissonnette, and Anson Carter, the highly entertaining show will add to the significance of the most important hockey games of the year.

On the tech side, a mixture of a hardworking crew and the willingness to be bold with technology has TNT Sports in an advantageous situation for the Stanley Cup Final. Joining Brown for the productions, including the season's ultimate series in a couple of months, will be Technical Operations Manager David Cabeza and Tech Managers Eric Grossman and Matt Martin.

We anticipate that we'll use workflows that were explored during events like the Winter Classic as well as some experimentation that we did during the regular season, adds Brown. We're looking at being able to flex our muscles and show how we can cover the Stanley Cup Final.

The NHL on TNT postseason gets started with two games on Saturday, April 19 featuring the St. Louis Blues vs. Winnipeg Jets at 6 p.m. ET and the Colorado Avalanche vs. Dallas Stars at 8:30 p.m. Both games will be available on TNT and truTV and on Max.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/04/18/nhl-playoffs-2025-tnt-sports-hi...
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