NESN's ‘Best Snow Day Ever' alternative Bruins broadcast aims to reach and educate a new audience about hockey
Titled 'Best Snow Day Ever,' it can be found on NESN Plus and the NESN 360 app as an alternative to the main Bruins-Panthers broadcast on NESN.
It's an ambitious undertaking. The Bruins and NESN applied to the NHL in November for the chance to produce an alternate broadcast, and were one of the four franchises and networks chosen.
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The NESN approach stands out in particular because it also subtly incorporates a learning element that children usually try to dodge on a snow day. There will be STEM lessons in the broadcast, involving such hockey-relevant subjects as math and physics.
'We wanted to stand out,' said Andrea Mazzarelli, Bruins vice president of marketing, who has been the team's lead on the project. 'We didn't want to do an animated game for the sake of doing an animated game. We had a bit of a greater purpose with it.
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'We had seen at least one other club last spring do a stat focused alt-cast, which was really designed for hardcore hockey fans who are really interested in the nitty-gritty stats and data.
'We thought that was cool, and with the rise of alt-casts, we wondered how we could get in that space but do it in a way that was a little bit more consumable and a little bit more aligned with our goals to sort of reach that next generation and a wider audience.'
When viewers turn to NESN Plus at 7 p.m. Tuesday, they won't be in the animated world just yet. The broadcast begins with what looks and feels like a real-life snow day announcement in Boston.
That's when the viewer — led by Blades, the Bruins' mascot — will be transported into a snow-globe vortex of the animated world for a narrative-driven story that coincides with the game.
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The animated broadcast will use NHL Edge Positional Data to track the puck and player movement, with Sony's Hawk-Eye and Beyond Sports technology recreating the live action in real time. Adam Pellerin and former Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference will call the action — in animated form, of course.
'It's unlike anything I've done before,' said Pellerin, who rehearsed with the virtual-reality headset for the first time recently. 'I was kind of freaking out a little bit when I put on the VR headset and saw my animated hand in front of me. It was kind of like being in 'Blades of Steel' [a popular Nintendo hockey game in the '90s]. It's incredibly cool.'
The STEM-centric lessons will utilize the Edge tracking data to teach the math and science behind such details as player skating and shot speed, and how fast someone gets from Point A to Point B.
'It's such an incredibly cool way to teach the elements of STEM through the game of hockey,' said Mazzarelli.
Justine Pouravelis, director of original content at NESN and the network's lead on the project, said the approach is similar to how 'NESN Clubhouse' — its kid-focused Red Sox show — approaches appealing to a younger demographic, which of course is one of the main purposes of the animated alternative broadcast.
'You want kids to be entertained to the point where they don't know they're learning,' she said.
Integrating STEM is something the Bruins wanted to lean into, said Pouravelis, to give the alternative broadcast even more purpose and appeal.
Once it received the NHL's go-ahead, NESN worked with an organization called Everfi, which does
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'And then from there,' said Pouravelis, 'it was about putting together the STEM in the animated world in a fun way that we could teach about hockey, which is a cool collision of everything.'
Only a few elements of the 'Best Snow Day Ever' broadcast won't be animated. NESN has produced 10 pieces of supplementary player-related content that will run throughout the game.
But not quite everything translates to the animated world. Pellerin noticed immediately when he saw his animated hand via the VR headset during that first rehearsal that his wedding ring was not showing up.
'I had to let my wife know,' said Pellerin with a laugh, 'that it was still on my finger in the real world.'
Chad Finn can be reached at
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