Exclusive: NHL updates massive video trove, readying for an AI world
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
For the past five years, the National Hockey League has been moving its massive collection of video footage from hard drives and slow tape backups to flash storage.
Why it matters: Having a fast and unified storage system provides greater efficiency today. It's also preparing the league for a new world of AI-enabled features for fans and players alike.
Driving the news: The NHL has been working with VAST Data, a storage technology company that has also done work for xAI and Pixar, among others.
- The first phase of the project involved moving decades of video archives, some 20 petabytes of data, onto the modern storage platform.
- The NHL also has VAST's systems installed at each of the league's arenas, enabling faster turnaround of high-resolution game footage for use by broadcasters and content creators.
Between the lines: The effort has resulted in a more efficient use of scarce IT resources, avoiding the need for folks with specialized storage knowledge such as how to build Fibre Channel networks.
- "Any time you can remove complexity in IT you are doing something right," Grant Nodine, the NHL's senior VP of technology, told Axios.
The data move also makes it easier to do machine learning and computer vision work on all that video, Nodine says. The effort complements an existing push to get more data from sensors in pucks and player jerseys.
- While sensors can show where the puck and skaters are, video analysis can help show which way a player is facing and who has control of the puck.
- The result will be more statistics for data-hungry fans as well as insights that players and teams can use to improve their performance.
- "There are a lot of things we can imagine," Nodine said.
The bottom line: As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky famously said, you want to skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.
