How the NHL pulled off its new goal simulation animations — and what comes next

In an overtime game against the Philadelphia Flyers recently, Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid flew into the zone on a breakaway, shot the puck off the post, recovered it and passed over to a streaking Leon Draisaitl for the winning goal.

Fans could watch a video clip of that goal, but the NHL’s official website offers a different way to process the play: a “goal simulation” animation.

McDavid is a small dark circle with 97 on it, being defended by orange circles with corresponding jersey numbers to the Flyers. The puck is a black speck. One can track Draisaitl’s journey from his own zone to the winning goal — and Travis Sanheim‘s inability to catch up to him — including what happened outside the frame of the television cameras.

Finally, in the cheekiest part of the simulation, a series of quickly multiplying Oilers “dots” appear on the ice, as Edmonton players hop over the boards to celebrate the win and mob Draisaitl.

“People kind of discovered it organically,” said Russ Levine, group vice president of statistics & information for the NHL. “They’re finding unique things or little viral moments, and that has been rewarding. That’s what we hoped fans would discover.”

The “goal simulations” are created through the NHL’s puck- and player-tracking technology, which collects data and tracks the movements of every player on the ice and the puck itself.

“We think it allows you to see a play in a different way. You can see the spacing, player positioning, gaps or lack thereof in a way that’s very stark and different from a broadcast view because it’s two dimensional and straight over the top,” Levine said. “We think it’s a really unique, quick way to review a play and see it in a different light.”

HOCKEY IS A SPORT of constant motion. Levine said this presentation of scoring plays allows fans to see how every part of that offensive chance develops.

“I think we’re always searching for things that will help fans better understand what’s happening on the ice,” he said. “Puck and player tracking is a way to take this very chaotic game — with live substitutions, players hopping on and off the ice and the best players playing a third of the game — and finding new ways to quantify performance or evaluate what happens on a play.”

But the goal simulations also have an old-school charm. Seeing plays develop into digitized shots and passes conjures memories of early hockey video games, too.

“The nostalgia for that era of video games seems to be never-ending,” Levine said. “And I do think you’re right: It’s simple, and it looks kind of like those early games.”

The NHL first started developing puck- and player-tracking technology in 2013, using several different variations of infrared and optical tracking systems. In 2019, the NHL and NHLPA announced that players would wear sensors inside their uniforms that, when combined with a chip located inside the puck, would capture real-time data ranging from speed to distance to mapping locations on the ice. There’s also an optical tracking component that validates that data “within a few milliseconds,” according to the league, which renamed its tracking technology NHL Edge.

Over the years, the league has learned how to handle some of the challenges to ensuring NHL Edge’s accuracy. Sometimes arenas move things around to obscure the sightlines of the cameras, which is part of the league’s game-night checklist for system calibration. Sometimes a chip goes out or gets knocked out of a player’s gear, so the league works with equipment managers to ensure they’re on the case.

“There’s some technical challenges, maintenance, and then there’s just some real life events that happen in games where things have to be corrected in a hurry to make sure we’re accurately capturing everything,” Levine explained.

Once captured, one of the uses for that data was through the SAP NHL Coaching Insights App, available to coaches and players on the bench during games via tablets. Levine said that’s where the goal simulations first showed up in 2022, as a way for teams to clip and analyze how plays developed. Known as “Virtual Replay” on the app, where full games are available, the NHL says its coaches have responded positively to it.

“They’ve appreciated the amount of tactical focus the view provides, along with the ability to see an accurate portrayal of width and depth on the playing surface that the traditional red line camera can skew,” said Brant Berglund, senior director of coaching and GM applications for the NHL. “They’ve also used it in video rooms and on the bench for various play reviews and coaching purposes.”

But the league believed that NHL Edge data could also be used to entertain and educate fans. It started working with a company called Beyond Sports to develop real-time digital recreations of NHL games in virtual reality and platforms such as Roblox.

Things took a giant leap forward in 2023 when the NHL and Disney worked together to create the Big City Greens Classic, which combined the NHL Edge location mapping with live, real-time volumetric animations of players and teams modeled after characters on the Emmy Award-winning show “Big City Greens.” As the Washington Capitals and New York Rangers played a game at Madison Square Garden, animated players mimicked their movements — under the watchful eye of a chicken in a referee shirt.

Incremental improvements were made last season for the Big City Greens Classic 2, with the Boston Bruins playing against the Pittsburgh Penguins:

THE NHL EDGE goal simulation animations are decidedly more low tech than the Big City Greens Classic, and that’s by design: While there’s inherent entertainment value in watching little circles race around the ice, the goal is more educational and analytical.

“It’s the same underlying data: multiple position points per second that can be translated, whether it’s in a virtual broadcast featuring Disney characters or O’s on a ring plot,” Levine said. “There’s a lot of different uses for it that we can imagine in the future.”

The league decided to add “goal simulations” this season as part of a larger overhaul of NHL.com’s game presentations. After the NHL sold its stake in MLB Advanced Media to Disney in 2021, the league eventually began running its official website in-house. The league wanted to integrate more content into its box scores, including from its tracking data. Levine said starting with a commonplace event, like a goal, made the most sense.

“The thought was, ‘What can we add that will immediately sort of benefit the fan experience?’ Those six-plus goal events a game are the most important bits of data we have,” he said. “The idea is to just show people a clear view of what’s happening on a goal.”

The NHLPA signed off on player tracking years ago. Despite goal simulations occasionally putting the spotlight on players who negatively impact a play, Levine said he hasn’t heard of any pushback from the players, and doesn’t anticipate any.

“I don’t think there’s any risk of an exposure of a player-performance issue in moving dots that wouldn’t be exposed by television,” he said.

The next evolution for the goal simulations is to allow fans to share the clips on social media.

“That’s something we’re working on. I think the response we’ve seen on social from people reacting to them on the site indicates there is an interest in it,” Levine said. “It’s kind of a different way to look at a goal. There can be sort of viral aspects of some of these goals. We’re excited to see what fans will do with it when we’re able to make them completely shareable.”