Sabres: How technology is shaping the future for the NHL

Early this season, the NHL began to integrate new technology tested during last year’s NHL All-Star Weekend festivities. The league hopes that their data player and puck tracking tech could help shape professional hockey’s future while enhancing the fan experience. The Buffalo Sabres, along with their fans, would utilize this new technology to acquire an entirely new view of hockey.

The Sabres are no stranger to tracking data. In fact, they’ve paved the way for other clubs and stadiums via fan experience and crowd monitoring technology, WaitTime. However, from a league perspective, fans might wonder why the sudden shift in a modern direction for a game steeped in tradition?

Well, in part, the answer can be found in the form of NHL VP of technology Keith Horstman. No stranger to solutions in professional sports, Horstman has provided just that.

For over 20 years he worked with the National Basketball Association. He led their conversion to digital and designed their statistics system. He developed live digital ingest & distribution workflows and environment designs where he integrated arena devices and design APIs. He also introduced a prototype used for tracking active players, referees, and the ball during an Indiana Pacers game, one that set the stage for the tech being rolled out this year in hockey for deliverable real-time data and statistics.

In just under three years, Horstman has helped bring pro hockey out of the ice age and into one of the premier sports for the use of cutting edge tech.

“From my perspective, the game is really about passing.” Hortsman said to Sport Techie. “And to be able to see the passing lanes and see how these guys thread a three-inch puck in a window that’s four inches wide is just mind-boggling.”

In fact, he sees hockey as one of the ideal sports for the SportsMEDIA Technology (SMT) developed chip-based movement tracking.

“The nature of tracking data really associates with the game more [in hockey] than in a baseball or football game,” Horstman said to SVG. “It goes back to the way we do stats, the old way of putting in single events. Now we’ve got the fluid flow of data for the continuous game. That sets hockey apart from everything else. Not only did the player score from this spot, but how did he get there, or how did the goalie come across the crease to make a save? There’s much more we can do with the fullness of the data in this sport than you can with other sports.”

The Sabres, along with the rest of the league, will look forward to this technology being maximized so they can utilize it at its full potential. It will also provide Buffalo fans with a new way to look at their team.