How was the 1st Rangers pandemic telecast?

How was the first New York Rangers telecast in the age of COVID-19?

Two thumbs up.  That’s the review that we have to give to the MSG Network and the NHL for the telecast of the New York Rangers exhibition game.  With all that could have gone wrong, the view from home was that it felt like a normal televised hockey game.  That’s pretty remarkable in these abnormal times.

One caveat, we watched the MSG Rangers feed of the game and did not see the NBCSN version. Let’s just say that we are biased and would rather watch Sam Rosen and Joe Micheletti over Mike Emrick any day of the week (or year).  If the Blueshirts advance past the Stanley Cup Qualifier all we will be getting is the NBC feed so enjoy Sam and Joe while you can.

The announcers

Sam and Joe were in New York City at the MSG studios.  Watching the game, you wouldn’t know it.  They have the benefit of access to 30 cameras, though it’s unclear if they can see all of them.

During a scrum in the Tampa-Florida telecast, the announcers made a point of telling viewers that they couldn’t see everything that was happening on the ice.  That could be an issue when something happens off camera, the announcers will have no idea and they will have to rely on replays.

There was no rinkside analyst so John Giannone was in the studio in New York along with Steve Valiquette.  On the national telecasts, that feature may be available.  We’ll see.

To be honest, even in games at the Garden, the play-by-play team is located far above the ice on the Chase Bridge so they aren’t that close to the action.  They have the benefit of soaking in the mood of the crowd, but there’s no doubt that they follow the action mostly on monitors.

The bottom line on the announcers is that if you didn’t know that they weren’t in the arena, you wouldn’t have noticed.

The television production

A lot has been made of the fact that the networks producing the telecasts, Sportsnet in Edmonton and NBC in Toronto, will have 30 cameras as opposed to the normal 20.  If they had that many cameras, we sure didn’t see them.   As an exhibition game, they might have not gone with all 30 and we may see a lot of new angles during the series, but for the most part, the shots were pretty standard.

The one noticeable camera angle was a wide shot of the defensive zone during play.  It looks like they have place cameras covering each defensive zone that allows for that angle.  It worked well and the good news is they never used the camera located behind the goal, one that NBC has favored in the past.

They did take great pains to limit the number of wide shots and kept the focus on the rink.  There were few shots that actually showed the lighted screens.  When they did, it felt a bit like we were looking at an EA Sports video game.

Audio was the subject of much discussion prior to play.  The telecast featured a muted layer of ambient crowd noise.  The NHL had said that they would be using crowd noise that EA Sports had recorded at actual games.  The level was so low, it was barely noticeable.  When play was stopped, they did use arena-generated music so there were no moments of dead silence.

The weird one was when goals were scored.  When the Islanders scored, they played the Islanders’ goal song and did the same when the Rangers scored.

It will be interesting to see if they continue to do that, especially since there will be designated home and away teams (the Rangers were the home team this game).

One explanation for this teleccast was that MSG produced separate Rangers and Islanders feeds, but probably used the same ambient audio for both, so they decided to play both goal songs.  We’ll see what they choose to do when the Carolina series begins.

Post-game interviews

Since the NHL has allowed only three reporters into the bubble and all of them work for nhl.com, all post-game interviews will be conducted as Zoom calls.  During the playoffs the league usually provide a couple players from each team for those interviews, along with the coaches.  For this game the interviewees were Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider along with David Quinn.

We will miss the locker room interviews, but nothing can be done about that and you have to respect the NHL’s stringent health guidelines that have resulted in no positive tests since they began living in the Toronto and Edmonton bubble.

As for the players themselves, both Trouba and Kreider said that once the game began, the lack of a crowd didn’t matter much.  Trouba said “When you’re on the ice playing, it isn’t a whole lot different. It’s on the bench when you notice it the most, you can hear everything that’s said…for me the biggest difference is when you’re sitting on the bench and there’s not a lot going on.”

Trouba noted that it could definitely affect the team’s play. “During the TV timeouts, you’re just sitting there in silence. It’ll be important to keep talking, keep the energy up…your team is the only energy you’ve got in the building.”

Kreider said that was a positive aspect.  “It’s definitely easier to communicate with your teammates on the ice and on the bench. Sometimes during the playoffs in certain buildings you can barely hear yourself think so that’ll be different.”

It would be nice if there was a “clean” feed available so fans could choose to hear the real sounds of the game. It would be fun to be able to watch a live stream without the added crowd noise or the play-by-play chatter and just hear the players, coaches and officials.  The league should think of providing that as an added feature, perhaps only on-line and even after the games.