Use science to improve game

In a year when the NHL has shut itself down, people have kept looking up. The Space Shuttle has flown over American cities to celebrate its retirement from service, NASA has landed the Curiosity probe on Mars, and Felix Baumgartner has broken the sound barrier while jumping out of a balloon 24 miles above New Mexico.

While launching Gary Bettman into space or dropping Donald Fehr from the stratosphere might be appealing ideas to hockey fans right now, there is more for hockey to take from humanity’s latest explorative exploits than cartoonish revenge for lost NHL games or Ilya Bryzgalov jokes. When top-flight pro hockey does return to North America, it's time to start taking better advantage of the gifts that science has given the world. Technology will not end the lockout, but it can take the game forward.

Everything starts with the puck. It may be hard to believe, but it has been 16 years since Fox introduced the much-reviled glow puck, a disc implanted with more circuitry than you would find in a phone today. While demand for a puck that glows on television is no higher now than it was in 1996, especially with the advent of HDTV, the fact that pucks can be crafted around electronic transmitters should inspire a change that can act as a technological springboard.

While the FoxTrax system required a motherboard with flashy spokes, all that the puck would need now is an implanted RFID (radio frequency identification) chip. While the glow puck was designed to be viewed on television, the RFID puck would change the game forever.

RFID technology already is part of the NHL. Last year, the Tampa Bay Lightning gave jerseys to season ticket holders that had RFID chips implanted in the sleeves. By scanning their sleeves at team stores and concession stands, the Lightning’s biggest fans can get discounts on merchandise and food.

The technology is not limited to close-range applications at a cash register or an electronic toll reader on the highway. In San Antonio, Texas, there are schools that use RFID-embedded identification cards to track students. Controversial though this may be, the ability to pinpoint the location of an RFID chip can be a boon to the NHL.

Even with one of the best video-review systems in sports, there are limitations to what the NHL can do with instant replay. If there is a pileup of bodies in the crease on a disputed goal, it is borderline impossible for officials to tell whether the puck crossed the line. All the overhead and in-the-net cameras in the world are useless if the puck is in the glove of a goaltender with his hand straddling the goal line, or under someone’s leg. The preponderance of teams who wear black equipment make sorting out tricky scoring plays even more of a challenge.

With RFID-implanted pucks, the NHL would be the first major professional sports league to use technology to ensure correct scoring decisions. While soccer, the global game and the top challenger to hockey’s Big Four status in North America, wrestles with the decision of whether to even use cameras on the goal line, hockey could move well ahead and begin to stake its own claim as the “Sport of the Future.”

Combining RFID pucks with tags on each player’s skates, the NHL could also use technology to make infallible decisions on offside and icing plays, and end controversy once and for all on too many men on the ice penalties. By programming a rules violation to automatically trigger a sound or a notification to a referee to blow his whistle, the NHL could theoretically take its linesmen off the ice, freeing valuable real estate on an ice surface that stays the same size as players get larger through the years.

In addition to taking factual decisions out of the hands of mistake-prone humans, RFID-equipped pucks and skates have another application that can turn into another great leap forward for the NHL, and that's in the load of data that they can record.

Thanks to the tireless work of the NHL’s Real Time Stats crews at all 30 arenas, we know that Florida Panthers defenseman Brian Campbell played 2,205 minutes and 31 seconds last season, the most ice time in the NHL. But which skater put in the most mileage on ice? The holy grail of hockey statistics, passing numbers, could be within reach with further application of technology. Using location data to create heat maps for teams and individuals would help forward-thinking teams to plot their strategy based on players’ actual tendencies rather than observations on scouting reports and video.

For diehard fans, answers to questions like “who’s the best player in the league at scoring top shelf?” would have factual answers. Analysts who track scoring chances would be able to rely on RFID data instead of guessing at whether a shot was attempted from within the scoring-chance area—this human variance is one of the greatest obstacles to scoring-chance data being applicable on a more widespread basis. The possibilities for RFID applications from a hockey data standpoint are endless.

The uses for technology do not stop with tracking pucks and players. Using sensors in helmets has allowed football teams, including at Virginia Tech to better monitor head injuries. The sooner that such sensors come to the NHL, the better. Technology also does not have to mean transmitting anything electronically—some of the greatest uses for scientific advances in hockey are in the evolving protective equipment that players wear, with new materials that provide a higher level of safety for hitter and hittee while preserving the wearer’s flexibility to move on the ice.