NHL on Fox

NHL on Fox was a television program that televised NHL games on the Fox television network and produced by Fox Sports.

The program ran from the 1994–1995 NHL season until the 1998–1999 NHL season. Fox paid $31 million a year ($155 million in total) to televise the NHL.

Coverage Overview
NHL's initial deal with Fox was significant as a network television contract in the United States was long thought unattainable during the presidency of John Ziegler.

For seventeen years after the 1975 Finals was broadcast on NBC, there would be no national over-the-air network coverage of the NHL in the United States (with the exception of CBS' coverage of Game 2 of the 1979 Challenge Cup and Game 6 of the 1980 Stanley Cup Finals and NBC's coverage of the NHL All-Star Game from 1990-1994) and only spotty coverage on regional networks.

This was due to the fact that no network was willing to commit to a large number of games, in turn, providing low ratings for NHL games.

ABC would eventually resume broadcasting regular NHL games (on a time buy basis through ESPN) for the 1992–93 season (and continuing through the 1993–94 season before Fox took over for the next five seasons).

The Fox deal is perhaps best remembered for the FoxTrax puck, which while generally popular according to Fox Sports, generated a great deal of controversy from longtime fans of the game.

Regular Season
Fox televised between five and eleven regionally distributed games on Saturday or Sunday afternoons during the regular season where anywhere from three to six games ran concurrently.

Fox Trax
FoxTrax (colloquially also called the glow puck, smart puck, laser puck, Fox Puck or super puck) was a specialized ice hockey puck with internal electronics that allowed its position to be tracked designed for NHL telecasts on the Fox television network.

Primarily, it was used to visually highlight the puck on-screen and display a trail when the puck was moving rapidly.

In 1994, Fox won a contract to broadcast NHL games in the United States. A common complaint among viewers was that the puck was difficult to follow on the ice. Thus, FoxTrax was created to remedy this problem.

The FoxTrax puck was first used during the 1996 NHL All-Star Game. It was last used during the first game of the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals. Fox was scheduled to televise Games 5 and 7, but the series ended in four games.

In August of 1998, the NHL broadcast rights went to ABC, and FoxTrax was not brought back for the final season.

Construction & Operation of FoxTrax Puck
To create the FoxTrax puck, a standard NHL puck was cut in half and a tiny circuit board with a battery was placed inside.

The circuit board contained a shock sensor and infrared emitters that were located on the flat surfaces and perimeter of the puck.

The enhanced puck was engineered to have the same weight, balance, and rebound as the original puck.

The two halves were then bonded with a proprietary epoxy compound and the puck could be used for gameplay.

The FoxTrax was developed with assistance from News Corp's Etak navigation subsidiary.

While the batteries were designed to last for 30 minutes and some were successfully used in tests for more than 60 minutes, a typical puck lasted only about 10 minutes on the ice.

For that reason, 30 FoxTrax pucks were provided for each game. The puck was activated when it was dropped by the ref or struck by a hockey stick.

During a Fox NHL broadcast, the puck emitted infrared pulses that were detected by both the 20 pulse detectors and the 10 modified IR cameras that were located in the rafters. The shuttering of the IR cameras was synchronized to the pulses.

Each infrared camera had an associated 66 MHz Intel 80486 computer to process the video locally and transmit the coordinates of candidate targets to the "Puck Truck" (a 55' production trailer).

The truck contained computers that superimposed computer graphics on the puck coordinates which could be seen by viewers at home.

The visual result was a bluish glow around the puck. Unfortunately, blue doesn't show up very well against the white of the rink.

Passes were indicated with the bluish glow plus a comet tail indicating its path. When the puck moved faster than 70 miles per hour, a red comet tail was added to it.

Despite rumors that the Fox employees would sometimes go into the stands to retrieve a puck that left the playing area, the pucks weren't re-usable. Like any other puck that left the ice, the FoxTrax pucks became souvenirs.

Response to FoxTrax Puck
There was a divided response to the implementation of the FoxTrax puck. Newcomers enjoyed the feature, since they could follow the game more easily.

In fact, a Fox Sports survey found that 7 out of 10 respondents liked the new puck.

World News Tonight did a story on the innovation in which ABC News anchor Peter Jennings (who was a native Canadian) claimed to receive significant favorable feedback from viewers on the technology, but cautioning that although he liked it, that "I don't think Canadians are going to like it as much as Americans are."

However, there was a strong backlash among hockey purists that argued that the video graphics were a distraction and turned hockey into a video game.

Others said that it really shouldn't be that hard to see a black puck on white ice.

The Nielsen ratings for the NHL on Fox began declining in 1996, falling from a regular-season peak average of 2.1 in 1996 to 1.4 for 1998. The NHL wouldn't recover from the slump until the NHL Winter Classic debuted in 2008.

Despite the puck having passed rigorous tests by the NHL to qualify as an official puck, matching the non-enhanced puck in every material way, some players who claimed the enhanced puck had more rebound and were frustrated that the pricey pucks were not available for practice.

The concept was later parodied in a Molson Canadian beer advertisement where an American marketer is attempting to sell the idea to a boardroom full of Canadian executives. As he is forcibly ejected from the room, a blue comet trail follows him (i.e. "they passed").

Canadian news satire program "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" parodied the concept, promoting a glow that recognized when Americans would appear on screen.

Canadian Folk/Comedy trio The Arrogant Worms satirized the glow puck in their song "Proud to be Canadian" with the line "we don't need no microchip inside our hockey pucks."

Sportswriter Greg Wyshynski named it the second-worst idea in North American sports history (trailing only the infamous Ten Cent Beer Night promotion that baseball's Cleveland Indians threw in 1974) in his book "Glow Pucks and Ten-Cent Beer."

Canadian Folk/Country group Corb Lund Band added a verse to their recording of "The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom Connors mocking the scheme.

In 2002, an informal poll by ESPN solicited opinions from readers on the worst innovations in sports history without specifying choices in advance. The Fox glow puck came in 6th place, just behind free agency.

Stanley Cup Playoff Coverage
In the first three rounds of the playoffs, two games were televised each round.

Canadians were upset over the apparent preference that the NHL had to Fox ahead of CBC for scheduling of playoff games as Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette wrote that the schedule was "just another example of how the NHL snubs its nose at the country that invented hockey and its fans."

The controversy repeated itself in 2007 as CBC was once again given second billing to Versus' coverage of the playoffs.

Main Broadcast Teams, Studio Hosts and Analysts
The main broadcast team was Mike Emrick and John Davidson while regionally distributed games were handled by a variety of announcers.

In the first four years of the deal, James Brown and Dave Maloney hosted the show from the Fox studio in Los Angeles.

In the final year, it was Suzy Kolber and Terry Crisp. Occasionally, current NHL players such as Mike Modano would serve as guest analysts.

All-Star Game, Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Finals
For the NHL All-Star Game, Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Finals, the games (which were national telecasts) were hosted from the arena. The 1996 and 1997 NHL All-Star Games were televised in prime time.

Stanley Cup Finals
Fox split coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals with ESPN.

Game 1 of the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals was the first Finals game shown on network television since 1980 and the first in prime time since 1973.

Games 1, 5, and 7 were usually scheduled to be televised by Fox. Games 2, 3, 4, and 6 by ESPN, however from 1995 to 1998, the Finals were all four game sweeps and 1999 ended in six games.

The consequence was that (except for 1995, when Fox televised Game 4) the decisive game was never on network television.

Perhaps in recognition of this, Games 3–7 were always televised by ABC in the succeeding broadcast agreement between the NHL and ABC Sports/ESPN.

Game 4 of the 1995 Stanley Cup Final was notable because not only did the New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup, but also their main television play-by-play announcer, Mike Emrick announced it.

Stanley Cup Finals Broadcast Schedules

 * 1995: Games 1, 4, 5 and 7 on Fox; Games 2, 3 and 6 on ESPN
 * 1996: Games 1, 3, 5 and 7 on Fox; Games 2, 4 and 6 on ESPN
 * 1997: Games 1, 5, 6 and 7 on Fox; Games 2, 3 and 4 on ESPN
 * 1998: Games 1, 5 and 7 on Fox; Games 2, 3, 4 and 6 on ESPN
 * 1999: Games 1, 2, 5 and 7 on Fox; Games 3, 4 and 6 on ESPN

The end of NHL on Fox
Things ended badly between Fox and the NHL when the league announced a new TV deal with ESPN that also called for ABC to become the new network TV partner (as previously mentioned).

Fox challenged that it wasn't given a chance to match the network component of the deal, but ABC ultimately prevailed.

Fox placed a bid for NHL broadcast rights when they came up for renewal in 2011, but they dropped out of bidding as a result of a bidding war between NBCUniversal and ESPN.

NBCUniversal (who owns the NBC, Versus and USA networks) won the bidding and a ten-year contract extension.

Play-by-Play Commentators

 * Kenny Albert
 * Mike Emrick
 * Pat Foley
 * Randy Hahn
 * Rick Jeanneret
 * John Kelly
 * Mike Lange
 * Josh Lewin
 * Jiggs McDonald
 * Bob Miller
 * Howie Rose
 * Sam Rosen
 * Dick Stockton
 * Dave Strader