‘We don’t hate your team’: A look at the NHL’s reimagined, tech-driven situation room

TORONTO – Kris King had his focus trained on the left side of a wall of screens.

A crease pileup involving a mass of hockey-playing humanity was taking place in one of that night’s NHL games.

The league’s executive vice-president of hockey operations and his colleagues inside its situation room were scanning replays of events hundreds of kilometres away to see if the sequence might be subject to a coach’s challenge or video review.

There wouldn’t be a call from the timekeeper’s bench to downtown Toronto this time. But if there had been, the state-of-the art, reimagined replay nerve centre and its staff would have been ready.

“The ability to manage the games from here is better than it’s ever been,” King said in an office tower adjacent to Scotiabank Arena overlooking Union Station. “We’re known for challenges, reviews and helping the referees look at their decisions in real time.”

Times, however, have certainly changed.

Long gone are the days of relying on broadcasters and satellite feeds to patch together decisions and help on-ice officials, which was the reality when the idea to put decision-makers in one room was first proposed more than 25 years ago.

King said NHL employees used to record games on VHS tapes and meet Colin Campbell — now senior executive vice-president of hockey operations — halfway between Toronto and his home in Tillsonburg, Ont., so he could decide if any further discipline was required on a specific sequence.

Numerous camera angles from across the league are now available with the click of a mouse thanks to Sony’s Hawk-Eye replay technology, which has been used and improved on since 2015.

“We were watching (standard definition) feeds on 10-inch screens,” King, a former NHL forward who started working for the league in 2001 after retiring as a player, said of the not-so-distant past. “Half the games, there was nobody watching because we didn’t have the ability to watch them. It’s come a long way.”

The NHL and Sony have refined and updated the hardware and software each season, including replay feeds that now arrive in the situation room at lightning-fast speed.

“We’re helping the NHL stay cutting edge,” said Daniel Cash, Sony Hawk-Eye’s managing director in North America. “The 4K images that we’re transporting back to a centralized location, that’s not trivial.”

“It’s a very complicated setup and system,” he added. “But the user interface is as intuitive as it can be for the guys here.”

A lot of thought went into the situation room’s massive makeover — it has the look of a Las Vegas sportsbook and flashy sports bar — the last two years that required more space because of the technological advances.

Tuesday night’s action saw 12 people monitoring a staggered lineup of 16 games alongside Campbell, King, NHL vice-president of hockey operations Rod Pasma and senior manager Kay Whitmore.

The situation room circle remains small, with an eye toward consistency when it comes to reviews, including goaltender interference challenges that, at times, leave fans and media on the outside confused.

“We don’t hate your team and we’re not out to screw you,” King said with a laugh. “Whether you like the call or not, it’s consistently being made by the same guys. We’re trying to keep the games fair. We’re trying to keep the games safe. 

“This room allows us to do that in real time.”

Tuesday saw a brief meeting of the minds on one sequence that might have required situation room intervention. The head coach in question chose not to make that call.

“That’s a good non-challenge,” King said in the moment.

There are also times when points of view on a challenge and subsequent decision are far from unanimous.

“When you’ve got a boss, he has one more vote than the rest of us,” King said of Campbell. “Generally, when we don’t all agree, we stay with the call on the ice. That’s what the GMs want us to do. Unless there’s conclusive video evidence to overturn a call, we leave it alone.

“That’s been our mandate.”

TEACHING MOMENTS

The NHL not only uses Hawk-Eye for replays, but also as a speedy education tool for referees by clipping specific incidents.

“If they have a game in Anaheim on Friday and they’re in L.A. on Sunday … officiating managers can send clips to that referee,” King said. “There’s a lot of coaching that goes on from what we do in this room.”

OPTICAL TRACKING

Sony also has optical tracking cameras in arenas — using 29 data points per player, six for sticks and one for the puck — to bring NHL animated visualizations and post-production content to life.

The technology isn’t yet able to help the situation room on real-time calls like a stick being above or below the crossbar on a deflected goal, or if a puck crossed the line. That future, however, might not be far away.

“I could definitely see a world in which we’re leveraging those data points to augment officiating,” Cash said. “It’s going to be very important to this room.”

King said his team has already looked at data after the fact to see if certain calls were correct in the moment.

“It’s not quick enough right now,” he said of optical tracking. “We’re always looking to better our ability to run this room … we’re baby-stepping our way through.

“We want to do it right.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2025.