When the NHL permitted the use of three Apple iPad Pros on the bench for mid-game video review during last year’s playoffs, the league wasn’t sure how much or even who would utilize the technology. The presumption was that the tablets running iBench, the app designed to carry XOS Digital’s Thunder video product, would generally remain in the hands of the assistant coaches.
“In some of the games, we actually saw the players going there, taking the iPad out and looking at it themselves,” NHL chief technology officer Peter DelGiacco said. “We didn’t really expect that.”
When XOS Digital’s director of hockey products, Brant Berglund, spied a TV shot of Penguins superstars Sidney Crosby and Evegni Malkin reviewing their latest power play on an iPad, he called the moment “surreal” and did what any proud father would do: paused his DVR, took a photo and emailed the picture throughout the company. “It’s validation for what we do,” Berglund said.
In fact, after the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup last spring, coach Mike Sullivan appeared at XOS’ Thunder Hockey Users Conference and raved about the tool, noting that his staff emphasized being better at using iBench to make on-the-fly tactical changes than their opponents.
“It was really interesting to hear how he embraced the technology, and he feels like it can give him a real competitive advantage,” Matt Bairos, the CEO of Catapult Elite for the Americas, said. (Bairos was previously CEO of XOS Digital before Catapult acquired the company in 2016.)
The playoff pilot program is now being expanded league-wide, with iPads available to coaches for every regular season game in the 2017-2018 season as the NHL becomes the first major North American sports league to allow in-game use of video. Coaches got their first taste of on-bench video when they received a monitor to help inform replay challenge decisions.
“The appetite is just continuously growing in terms of the need for information and real-time information,” Bairos said. “It’s all about how much you can consume.
“That’s all we’ve done, as simply as we can: Take all the data you have, marry it up with your video and make sure it always works when you go to get it, wherever you are. That’s always been our mission since the start.”
The league office noted an increase in interest for iBench as the playoffs progressed. DelGiacco said some coaches appeared to have an epiphany where they said, “‘I get it now.’ During the first round, you could see the difference. When teams started out using it, they were like, ‘Ok, how do I use it?’ Then it had a life of its own during the first couple of games. They said, ‘This is great.’”
Last season’s 16 postseason entrants had a headstart in using the technology, and now 15 more teams will be equipped, with what will certainly be a wide range of implementations across the league.
“Right now, the biggest impact I think that those have is on our special teams where we can make adjustments quickly,” Coyotes video coach Steve Peters, who backed up Hall of Fame goaltender Eddie Belfour on the University of North Dakota’s 1987 NCAA title team, said. “I think we’ll still take our 5-on-5 play and system play will be more intermission-based when we can take more time to look at these things.”
Arizona will start by using only two of the three iPads at their disposal, handing one to each of the assistant coaches running the penalty kill (Scott Allen) and power play (John MacLean), who can then coordinate individual needs as necessary.
In an interview with the Boston Globe, Sullivan credited assistant Rick Tocchet for coordinating much of the on-bench video work and helping mercurial Phil Kessel reach his potential on the power play. Tocchet has now taken over as head coach of the Arizona Coyotes, whose roster skews toward the up-and-comer rather than the Penguins’ stable of veteran stars. Tocchet told Peters how the Penguins used iBench to see specifics of skating space, defensive alignments and goalie maneuvers. The set of 20-something Coyotes are hungry for such information, but there’s a concern about not overwhelming the youngsters.
“It almost becomes too much,” Peters said. “We don’t want every player coming over the boards after every shift and wanting to see things and wanting to review what they just finished on the ice. We still want our players to play. You don’t want that to become a crutch. You want it to become a tool.”
That very philosophy governed XOS’ design of the iBench interface, which is primarily run as a full-screen monitor with playback buttons on the sides and reviewable clips at the top. Administrative tools are hidden. The video runs on a short delay, which is ideal for quick peeks at the tablet to see something that just happened. Coaches can also use a Bluetooth remote to flag clips for later review.
“The trick with the iBench application and anything you would implement on the bench during a game is to not let the possibilities of what you could do impede or adverse to what you actually can do in that environment,” said Berglund, a former Boston Bruins video coach. “You can’t complicate things. Everything has to be digestible and quick.”
After all, Peters noted, a football player might have 10 or more minutes on the sideline to make adjustments, but hockey players might only have 90 seconds between shifts. Plus there’s a “danger factor,” Peters said, noting that the bench is exposed to playing surface and that too much divided attention can make players susceptible to errant pucks.
Managing the workflow and finding the most opportune time to use the iPads are among the adaptations that players and coaches need to make, but the postseason showed they didn’t have to sweat the technical intricacies or logistics of making the system work.
Though the green light to the plan was given only about three weeks before the postseason began, the NHL spent the fall surveying arenas and putting a plan in place for its eventual installation. Berglund praised the league as “unsung heroes” of the process for their sturdy wifi that ran smoothly for the teams without interfering with the point-of-sale concessions equipment and other network-dependent devices. Being able to rely on the system was essential. “We want to make it like a dial tone to them,” Grant Nodine, NHL senior vice president for technology, said.
“It gives us the ability to stress-test the solution,” DelGiacco said. “We can put our best people there during the games to combat any unforeseen challenges that might pop up.”
With technical hurdles seemingly cleared, the onus is now on the teams to foresee new uses for the nascent technology.
“I wish I could tell you more on how we’re going to use it,” Peters said, “but I just don’t know until we actually start using it.”