Behind the scenes of Prime Video's innovative new NHL broadcast
While you’ll only hear one voice at a time on an NHL broadcast if you’re watching at home, there’s a team of nearly 100 people working each night performing specific jobs to bring the game to life.
Offside got the chance to take a behind-the-scenes last week between the Toronto Maple Leafs and San Jose Sharks, where the Prime Monday Night Hockey team offered up a few secrets of how they bring the action from the arena to viewers at home.
Prime is nearing the end of its first year of having exclusive rights to weekly games in Canada, with the deal carrying through to the end of the 2025-26 regular season.
Sub-licensing the rights for the Monday night broadcasts from Rogers and Sportsnet has quite the undertaking for Canada’s first streaming-only broadcast in its inaugural run of games.
In one of two production trucks parked in the arena loading docks, it’s game producer Mark Askin calling out the shots.
Pulling clips from over 50 different cameras located around the rink, Askin might actually be the only person in the whole rink talking more than play-by-play announcer John Forslund.
Askin’s a bit like a football head coach calling the plays, except instead of making a decision and then waiting a few seconds to see how it plays out, he’s working basically non-stop while the game is live.
Mark Askin (left) leads the Monday Night Hockey production truck.
With a direct line to Forslund’s ear and the rest of the production and on-air team, Askin calls out each shot to his team, looking at the different monitors around the truck to figure out what’s best to hone in on at any specific moment.
“I feel a ton of responsibility because of the nature of who we’re broadcasting to,” Forslund said in reference to Canadian hockey fans. “We don’t have a set plan [of how the broadcast will go]. So when you don’t have a set plan, you kind of move very quickly.”
Without as many commercial requirements as their cable TV competitors, Prime fits in an extra four minutes of action in between the intermissions compared to what viewers might be used to.
They’re also sneaking in a few additional sections during the periods, often coming back from break 15 seconds sooner than a traditional TV broadcast to fit in a few extra details about what’s happening in the game or some extra colour along the way.
Askin isn’t solely picking at random but figuring out a storyline of the game while also trying to select the right way to tell it at any point in time. For a build-up to a goal, it might involve showing a hard forecheck, whereas a penalty might show the offending player frustrated in the box after being sent away.
John Forslund stands during much of the game in order to have the best view of the action.
While the viewers tune in just before puck drop ā or to catch the Home Ice Access pregame show that offers a live look at the team’s warm-ups and shots around the rink ā production meetings for Prime games are typically done in the week prior, with each of the streaming platform’s 26 games across the season being meticulously planned out in the days and weeks leading up to it.
The most unique job might go to the video team’s V1 and V2 camera shaders, who have to ensure that the ice in each rink they go to is a clean shade of white. It’s an ongoing process, with touch-ups happening all game long to make sure the lighting looksĀ just right for viewers at home.
There’s people tasked with graphics, clipping short segments of the game to catalogue for possibly replays later, and the technical director who helps bring all of Askin’s instructions to the screen. In the booth next to Forslund and colour commentator Jody Shelley, there’s a floor manager making sure everything runs smoothly in the connection between the truck and the booth.
For Forslund, his preparation begins with an in-depth notes process on each and every player for the two teams. Using a short-form notation of each player’s stats, their history with the team, recent performance, hometowns, heights, weights, and ages, Forslund says he’s been using the same system dating back to 1985.
John Forslund’s meticulous pregame notes.
“I always feel comfortable. I feel at ease, because I feel like I’m prepared, and when you’re prepared, you’re good,” Forslund said about his pregame prep, which he either gets done at his hotel room or on his plane ride into whatever city he’s calling the game from.
Working full-time as the Seattle Kraken’s play-by-play announcer on Root Sports Northwest while also calling some games on TNT, making sure everything is in line is key for Forslund and the rest of the team to ensure a smooth production.
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One of the other stars of the show is Andi Petrillo, who’s tasked with interviewing players and other guests who come on the broadcast.
Every game at Prime is marketed to be a marquee matchup, giving the sort of production more typical of an NHL playoff game.
One of the choices made to bring fans closer to the action is the location of the broadcast desk for pregame/postgame and intermission shows, which is often located somewhere on the concourse of the arena, right next to the fans themselves.
Like Petrillo and Forslund, pretty much everyone on the show has other jobs they’re working on throughout the season in markets across the NHL. But once a week throughout the regular season, the ensemble cast comes together to help produce one of the sport’s most unique productions.
“I feel like everyone [on the Prime broadcast] is pulling for the same thing. We want to put a great product out there,” Petrillo said. “We’re not inventing hockey, we’re not inventing the production of a game, but we’re still trying to bring something that is unique to viewers and makes them excited to watch the game that they love… to even be a teeny tiny bit of it is pretty incredible.”