NHL To Integrate Puck, Player Tracking Ability By 2019-20 Season

Have we finally seen the end of controversial “no goal” calls?

This technology will be tested during the 2019 NHL All-Star Game in San Jose, Calif., and Bettman is quite excited about it.

“The Puck and Player Tracking system can track pucks at a rate of 2,000 times per second in real-time with inch-level accuracy,” Bettman said, via NHL.com. “We’ll instantaneously detect passes, shots, and positioning precisely. It will be equally accurate in tracking players — their movement, speed, time on ice — you name it.”

For all of this to work, every arena hosting an NHL team must have 14-16 antennae in the rafters, four cameras to support puck and player tracking, and a sensor placed on the shoulder pads of every skater. On top of that, they will need to have 40 pucks with a sensor inside ready to go for each game.

Bettman is quite excited about the technology and thinks millennials and Gen-Z will love this new technology.

Testing for the tracking also was done at the 2015 All-Star Game, the World Cup of Hockey in 2016 and the 2018 All-Star Game in Tampa Bay.

The ability to track the puck certainly is going to help officials make “goal” or “no goal” calls in the future and will potentially have an impact on player performance overall.