It took all of about 15 minutes of watching NHL Coast to Coast on Thursday night before I felt myself starting to twitch involuntarily.
The show, a weekly Amazon Prime studio broadcast of live action and almost-live highlights, is the first genuinely new approach to hockey coverage in Canada in years. Modelled on the NFL’s RedZone Sunday marathon that popularized what’s known as whiparound coverage, Coast to Coast hoovers up the local feeds of all games taking place over the course of a night – this week, eight matches kicked off between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. (ET) – and then serves them up for viewers when the action intensifies.
For NFL fans watching RedZone, that can sometimes mean filling the screen with up to eight games at a time – the infamous octobox. But because football broadcasts are filled with so much downtime – shots of the crowd, ads, barking coaches, players lolling on the sidelines – it’s usually not a problem to focus on the action when it breaks out in one of the boxes.
Hockey is an entirely different beast. So when, this week, the Coast to Coast producers simultaneously put up the Kings-Sabres, Canadiens-Bruins and Leafs-Devils games – and then later filled the screen with four games featuring rollicking end-to-end action – I started to feel like I’d got on a roller coaster without popping a Gravol. Even host Andi Petrillo hinted at the effect. “I feel like my dog now,” she said, imitating what happens when her doodle suddenly eyes some prey in the backyard. “‘Squirrel! Squirrel!’ I know exactly how they feel. ‘New Jersey!’ ‘Squirrel!’”
But Petrillo, 44, and I (er, older than 44) aren’t the target audience, anyway. The NHL is hungry to woo Gen-Z and Gen-A, who have been raised on video games and rarely watch a single regular-season game from start to finish – though, to be frank, do any of us, any more?
Coast to Coast, a co-production of NHL Productions and Amazon Prime as part of the streamer’s entry this year into hockey in Canada, is shot in a New Jersey studio decked out in what’s supposed to be a cottage motif: The wall behind Petrillo is filled with a graphic of an oversized picture window looking out onto a lake, with mountains in the distance. Every so often, an animation of stars would dapple across the evening sky in the distance. If you looked closely, you might have noticed they formed the shape of the swooshy Amazon arrow that’s slapped on every Prime home-delivery package.
For the program’s inaugural edition, Petrillo was joined in studio by P.K. Subban and Jason Demers, two jovial fellows who have recast themselves after retirement from their pro careers as entertaining – and sometimes unbridled – hockey broadcasters for ESPN and the NHL Network, respectively. They were reliably quippy, even if they also had a nervous energy – it was, after all, opening night – which meant they frequently talked over each other.
Still, the three together had a looseness that’s unusual for Canadian hockey broadcasts, even among the crew at TSN, who tend to have more chirpy camaraderie than the folks at Sportsnet. It was infectious. When Demers showed off custom-made kicks decorated with the logos of the five teams he’d played for, and noted he wasn’t wearing any socks, Subban quipped, “His ankles are lotioned, too, so that’s good.”
On opening night, the show was clearly a work in progress: With multiple games on screen, sometimes the audio from one game in which nothing much was happening would be heard, while audio from another game showing a goal was muted. Too often, producers would cut away from exciting moments – such as when the Florida Panthers pulled their goalie toward the end of their game against the Senators – to show an inconsequential goal that had happened minutes before in a different game that hadn’t been featured much all night long.
Maybe there was just too much going on for producers to digest: more than 55 goals were scored during the time that Petrillo and company were on. Still, the NHL has to be pleased. On first blush, the show plays like a four-hour weekly ad for the league.
About two hours in, Coast to Coast came back from a commercial break to find NHL commissioner Gary Bettman relaxing in the studio. Bettman’s default public persona is jittery and defensive, but as you watched, you might have found yourself wondering if perhaps that’s just because we only see him when boos are raining down from resentful fans, or when he’s facing pesky reporters. Nestled comfortably between Petrillo and Subban, he was almost radiant.
“It looks like you guys are having fun,” he said. Petrillo gushed about the slick Prime set, and Demers, who as a defenceman was always good for an assist, set up Bettman with a prompt about how awesome the new owners of the Utah Hockey Club are. The conversation got around to the fact that, the previous night, Bettman had been hanging with the singer Shaboozey after a pregame concert at the Utah home opener.
“I was sending video clips to members of my family,” Bettman explained, “and, at least to my teenaged grandchildren, all of a sudden I got cool.” Petrillo gushed about “all these celebrities that are jumping on board.”
This must all feel like a dream to Bettman. After decades of selling his hockey games to broadcasters who insisted on at least occasionally being able to have their reporters ask him tough questions, along comes a streamer with bottomless pockets, more data about his fan base than George Orwell could have ever dreamed possible, and seemingly no interest in ruining the good vibes with anything approaching journalism.
“You’re welcome in this studio any time,” Petrillo said. “It feels cozy,” Bettman replied.