It’s about 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13, and enough production people to make up four hockey lines are sat in rows in the dark control room, illuminated by screens surrounding them from every angle.
Their bosses and a few guests are standing behind them, watching intently as they cue up b-roll, count down the talent and ready graphics. They’re producing “The Point,” ESPN’s NHL pregame show, which will preview one of the biggest hockey nights of the season.
The puck is about to drop on “Frozen Frenzy“, a one-night hockey extravaganza dreamed up by the network to showcase the sport, as it fights for a word in the national conversation dominated by football and for a moment, playoff baseball.
In hockey terms, this is like Martin St. Louis picking a fight with Zdeno Chara. But that hardly matters to anyone watching. On a night where there is no NFL or major college football, and only Rays-Guardians to catch the average sports viewer’s wandering eye, hockey thrusts itself center-ice, with Bristol the headquarters.
All 32 NHL teams are in action tonight, with start times staggered from 6 p.m. through 11 p.m. eastern. This is the fourth-annual edition of the event, held in October each year. It took some considerable planning to put this on, from persuading local TV rights holders and arena execs to agree to the atypical puck-drops, to getting complete buy-in from the league.
“I started thinking about four, five years ago with our rights set that we have with the NHL, what if we created a day where it was every team playing and we jammed it into a five, six-hour window, and we recreated the mania that is on a college football Saturday or an NFL Sunday?” said Eric Loh, Director of NHL Programming at ESPN. “And you do it for hockey on a night where we could go with all of our networks and platforms and all of our technology here at ESPN, how do we rally the troops and make it feel big? I call it a hockey holiday.”
If this is a hockey holiday, then John Buccigross might as well be Santa Claus. He’s got the white beard to match, and he’s resplendent in his gray sweater, slacks and original Air Jordans as he prepares to host proceedings on ESPN2, while ESPN airs a national tripleheader, starting with Devils-Red Wings at 6 p.m.
Buccigross has been with ESPN since the late ‘90s, and he’s championed the network’s NHL coverage since the NHL 2Night days, on ESPN2. When ESPN lost NHL rights in 2004, Buccigross would go out of his way to lend a verbal tip of the cap to fans, making a point to say, “And now to our top story…” on SportsCenter while introducing a B or C-block hockey highlight. Since 2021, the network has NHL rights again, and Buccigross, along with Steve Levy, have been the point men on coverage.
“The hockey fan feels underserved in our country, across all media, so this is a way to serve them, give them a nice five-course dinner at a five-star restaurant,” Buccigross said.
If he wasn’t anchoring coverage tonight, he says he’d be home watching anyway, as he does on a nightly basis to prepare for play-by-pay duties and to keep up with what’s going on. Joining him the crew tonight will be Levy, former goalie and analyst Kevin Weekes, as well as former player P.K. Subban and hockey insider Emily Kaplan.
“I think it’s nice to celebrate the sport, that’s what we do well. We live the sport every day, we have institutional knowledge, 12 months a year,” Buccigross said. “We live hockey. I think the fans know that and they feel that.”
It will take about 40 people, from camera operators, to producers, directors, editors and people keeping track of every puck bounce and power play, to put ‘Frozen Frenzy’ on tonight. Much of the coverage will emanate from the network’s brand-new Studio W, which could easily be mistaken for a hockey rink with its 9,200 square feet of LED screens, including across the floor, which looks like a sheet of ice so clean you’d think it came from a glacier.
That all of this is happening on the quiet, idyllic campus that sprawls 120 acres isn’t surprising, of course— this is what they do. But seeing it unfold in person gives almost an eerie feeling. The studios are hushed and chilly, to keep the equipment running and host Steve Levy happy. Our host for the day, ESPN communications director Andy Hall, tells us Levy likes it cool in there.
Just a couple of doors down, host Matt Barrie is finishing up SportsCenter, broadcast to millions nationally, but he’s doing so in a room where you can hear a pin drop, just a few camera operators there to witness it happen in person.
Walk down the hall a bit, and you pass Hall of Fame baseball writer Tim Kurkjian, sitting patiently in a chair by the cafeteria as he prepares for a radio interview. SportsCenter host Kevin Connors sits in a meeting room in the back, sports media dignitaries just working through another day at the office.
We meet NHL rules analyst Dave Jackson, a longtime former NHL referee who is serving as an in-house expert tonight. He usually works from home, but he’s been brought on campus just for this occasion. He says it’s tougher to keep up on a night like this– with so many games overlapping– than it is during a playoff night.
Sixteen games begin and end, 112 goals are scored, five games go into overtime, and two into a shootout. Connor Bedard makes his return to the Blackhawks, teammate Patrick Kane ties Phil Housley for the most assists by a U.S. born-player in NHL history, and the Tkachuk brothers combine for nine points in a Panthers’ win over the Blue Jackets. There are highlight-reel goals, fights, milestones, a one-on-one interview with commissioner Gary Bettman, and tributes to the one-and-only former analyst and coach Barry Melrose, who passed away in September at age 70 following complications with Parkinson’s.
As the final buzzer sounds on Sharks-Bruins around 1:50 a.m., with visions of puck battles and chasedowns buzzing around in his head, the author, long since home from his ESPN tour, finally fades gently into that good night.
But for one night in the middle of a jam-packed fall sports calendar, hockey sure didn’t.
