Seattle Kraken coach Dan Bylsma isn’t one to throw in the towel. Unless, that is, it’s thrown on him first.
Oh, that’s right. The region wide power-outage kept most Kraken fans from watching Seattle’s Nov. 20 3-0 shutout over Nashville, broadcast nationally on TNT. Even if you saw social media clips, there’s a part of the story you didn’t see.
To start at the beginning, Bylsma was occupied gifting a puck to a fan in the first row. He wasn’t aware that a towel tossed away by Jaden Schwartz was headed straight for his dome.
Sports Illustrated reported on the Kraken comedy, as did NHL.com. “Dan Bylsma wasn’t sweating out the Seattle Kraken’s game, but he got toweled off anyway.” But wait, there’s more. This is how the coach arrived at his postgame presser. At least, we think it was the coach.
Make no mistake – Bylsma takes coaching seriously. He’s self-aware enough to also know a good gag when he’s part of one. That’s a winning combination in any profession.
Kraken Viewership On The Rise
Speaking of TV highlights, the Kraken’s move to free, over-the-air broadcasts is paying early dividends. Telecasts so far this season on a network of stations in the Pacific Northwest are averaging 50,000 viewers (KONG-TV and KING-5 in Seattle). According to Sports Business Journal, early-season games the past two years were seen by 14,000-15,000 subscribers to the ROOT Sports cable channel.
The move away from the regional sports network comes at a cost. As SBJ points out, ROOT was paying up to $30 million in annual rights fees. However, the team now controls its own broadcasts, including the sale of ad time.
Kraken TV Pros Thriving In New Home
While the Kraken Hockey Network is new this year, many of the pros both in front of and behind the cameras remain the same. “The franchise turned to familiar faces to produce this robust lineup of games,” reports SportsVideo.org, “(producer) Ryan Schaber and (director) Patrick Brown.”
KHN doesn’t operate on the cheap. “For home games, the crew deploys 13 operated cameras and boasts a whopping five robotics and five super slo-mo-capable cameras.” Why so many? “One of our investors said, ‘More cameras means more drama,'” explained Schaber.
Director Brown doesn’t hesitate naming super slow motion replays the most powerful tool in his arsenal. “Super-mo has been the number one most important innovation in sports television in the last 15 years. There’s nothing that comes close to allowing the regular viewer to see action play out in a way they couldn’t see it before.” The technology makes hockey on TV accessible to casual and new fans, “To help them understand the speed, the split-second decision making, the random bounces of the puck that occur.”
Producer Schaber adds about KHN, “It feels like a hockey broadcast on a hockey channel. This is no slight about where we came from, but it always felt like a hockey game on a baseball channel.” Specifically, graphics, animation and music were created from scratch, not borrowed from Tegna, the parent company of KING and KONG-TV. “We didn’t use any of Tegna’s look, we didn’t use any of (streaming partner) Amazon’s look, we created our own.”
The production team also has a figurative and literal seat at the table. “We’re in the same building now as the coaches and the players (at Kraken Community Iceplex). They practice right underneath us. As a result, we know more stories to tell.”