It was less than a week before the Washington Capitals‘ game at the New York Rangers on March 14, and the ESPN production team still wasn’t sure how it would handle a video goal review during the game.
Normally, this wouldn’t be a concern. But normally, the referee isn’t a 3D animated chicken.
“When the ref skates out to make the announcement, we’ll just track the ref’s mic,” director Jeff Nelson of ESPN said. “But wait … this is interesting. I need to find out if the chicken would actually head out on the ice for something like that.”
These were the questions being asked and answered behind the scenes for several months as ESPN, Disney and the NHL partnered for a first-of-its-kind broadcast: an entire hockey game recreated in real-time inside a virtual environment, featuring 3D animated players whose movements synced with what was happening on the ice at Madison Square Garden, thanks to puck and player tracking data.
The “NHL Big City Greens Classic” features live, real-time volumetric animations of players and teams modeled after characters on the Emmy Award-winning “Big City Greens.” It’s scheduled to air on March 14 at 7 p.m. EDT on ESPN+, Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney+. The traditional game telecast between the Rangers and Capitals will be available on ESPN and ESPN+.
The virtual game will take place in Big City’s “Times Circle,” and will feature animated avatars of actual players in the NHL game. When Alex Ovechkin takes a slap shot at MSG, the NHL Edge technology on his jersey and in the puck will register that and the player wearing his jersey in the Big City Greens Classic will do the same.
But along with the actual players, there will be characters from the show participating in the game. Gramma Alice and her son Bill will replace the starting goaltenders for the Capitals and Rangers. Cricket Green will replace a player on the Rangers while Tilly Green will replace one on the Capitals. Other characters might be involved later in the game and during intermissions.
The announcers for the game — Drew Carter and Kevin Weekes — will broadcast from ESPN’s Bristol studio wearing motion capture suits. Their animated avatars will appear on the broadcast.
“We were blown away. It’s an incredible accomplishment and such a cool way to watch hockey,” Chris Houghton, who co-created the animated show with brother Shane, said. “This all came together so quickly, and it’s all being rendered live as the actual players skate around on the ice.”
Actual players … and one chicken referee.
“The chicken ref,” Nelson said, smiling. “Once he drops the puck, he poofs away and appears again when there’s a faceoff.”
Less than a week before the broadcast, Nelson and his team were still trying to determine what viewers would see and hear from the chicken ref on a goal review.
Could the chicken simply mouth the audio captured from the referee’s mic on the ice at MSG? Well, that would lead to another complication: It was already determined the chicken would also sound like a chicken. For example, if there’s a controversial penalty during the game, the virtual announcers would have the ability to interview the chicken ref, who will justify its call with impassioned bocking, clucking and other fowl noises.
The chicken ref wasn’t always a chicken ref. In fact, many aspects of this landmark broadcast have morphed and changed over the last several months. But none of it would be possible without the data that’ll be used to control the virtual Capitals, Rangers, Cricket and Gramma Alice on Tuesday night.
“It’s almost been a year now since we understood the technology,” said Johanna Goldblatt, a manager in programming and acquisitions for ESPN that helped shepherd the project. “The puck and player tracking has been so crucial in making this happen.”
THE NHL DIDN’T start tracking its players and pucks with a chicken referee in mind — or really any of the immersive technology it can fuel today.
“Were we thinking about Metaverse then? No, we weren’t thinking about Metaverse,” David Lehanski, NHL senior VP for business development and global partnerships, said. “We were thinking about stats and analytics and new data and storytelling. We were thinking about broadcast visualizations. We were thinking a little bit about gaming. But we weren’t thinking about this stuff.”
For years, the NHL tried to figure out how to collect real-time data during games using technology. The 1990s saw the much-derided FoxTrax “glow puck,” in which an array of infrared emitters and the electronics were placed inside the puck. The NHL started seriously exploring puck and player tracking again in 2014, although its cost and some quality control problems with the pucks created growing pains.
The latest incarnation — dubbed NHL Edge and powered by SMT — has been the most successful version of puck and player tracking for the league. It collects data through sensors on player uniforms and inside the puck itself. There’s also an optical tracking component that validates that data “within a few milliseconds,” Lehanski said.
The data goes beyond player and puck location. The sensors measure speed and distance for skaters and on their shots, among other data points.
Now that they had a tracking system they were confident in, the NHL started chasing the big ideas they had for that data. For example, using real-time puck and player tracking to recreate a hockey game in a virtual 3D environment, with animated players and camera angles that couldn’t be accomplished in the real world.
That was something a Netherlands-based company called Beyond Sports was already doing for professional soccer matches. The NHL partnered with the firm and began showing demonstrations of virtual hockey games, which could be viewed on screens or using VR goggles. The players were big and blocky. The action was slower than in an actual game. But the potential for the technology was obvious and it’s only been refined since then.
When the NHL started its new media rights deals in 2021, brainstorming began on ways to use that tech for an alternative virtual broadcast of NHL games.
“In a really short window it kind of exploded. At one point, we were just thinking of doing something a little small,” Lehanski said. “Then it quickly grew and grew because of the buy-in from Disney.”
Beyond Sports and the NHL presented their technology to ESPN during the 2022 Stanley Cup Final. Ed Placey, a vice president in ESPN’s Event and Studio Production group, was one of those invited to check it out.
“I get immersed in a lot of our innovative production approaches and new technology,” he said. “So I get called into a lot of meetings to look at technology that somebody finds interesting and wants to know if there’s any ‘there’ there.”
Placey sat in a conference room at ESPN’s Seaport offices in New York City and watched a game between the Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning on two screens: The live game on one and a real-time recreation of the game in a virtual space on another.
In hearing the real play-by-play and watching the virtual game, Placey said the path forward was clear: Take the game seriously … but laugh a little bit in the presentation.
Since it was established there was some “there” there, Goldblatt started talking with the Disney Family Networks and found interest on the Disney XD side.
“They’re exploring sports more and really intrigued by the technology there,” she said. “‘Big City Greens’ seemed like an awesome opportunity, especially with the connections with the Houghton Brothers.”
Chris and Shane Houghton’s “Big City Greens” first aired on The Disney Channel in 2018. It featured a farmer named Bill Green who loses his home in the country and takes his children Cricket and Tilly to move in with Gramma Alice on a small farm in the middle of Big City. (They would eventually move back to their farm in Smalton.)
Shane Houghton said the brothers always had an affinity for hockey.
“Growing up, there was a pond on our parents’ property and when it would freeze over in the winter. We would lace up some skates, grab some hockey sticks, skate around, and smack a puck at each other,” he told ESPN. “I don’t know if I’d exactly call it ‘hockey,’ but it was definitely ‘hockey-esque.'”
The brothers would eventually attend Michigan State University and went to Spartans hockey games there. “We’d often get great seats right down close to the action. There is no sport that gets the blood pumping quite like watching hockey,” Shane Houghton said.
For the NHL and ESPN, the partnership with Big City Greens offered an avenue to bring hockey to potential new fans — and ones in demographics that the NHL is chasing.
“We want to meet the fans where they are,” Goldblatt said. “And if this is an environment that gets you more interested in watching hockey, then why shouldn’t we take advantage of, you know, the Disney company as a whole? Taking advantage of these family- and kid-friendly arms of content that we have only makes sense to us as we want to grow the sport of hockey and grow the fans that are interested in it.”
Even if the sport in question isn’t always well-mannered on the ice.
“Are we going to see Cricket and Tilly Green in a fist fight?” Goldblatt asked, with a laugh. “That’s the big question, right?”
THE SHORT ANSWER is “no,” there won’t be fistfights between “Big City Greens” characters or virtual Capitals and Rangers on Tuesday night.
“The biggest thing we get asked is what happens if there’s a fight,” Placey said. “Well, you won’t see punches thrown, arms swinging or anything else. You’ll at best see players belly-bumping more than anything else.”
The chips on the players’ jerseys don’t track body part movement. They interpret where the puck is in relation to the player. The virtual Capitals and Rangers will engage with their sticks and handle the pucks when the NHL Edge data indicates their real-life inspirations are doing so.
Getting the 3D animated players to look and act like hockey players was one of the challenges for the production team. The first iteration of the Beyond Sports tech featured large blocky players — think Minecraft or Roblox. Lehanski said that when those players would crowd around the net, the goalie would literally disappear from sight.
“The first couple iterations of this looked kind of jarring. You see the ‘Blockies’ and you’re like, ‘OK, think I understand how this looks, but it’s still kind of hard to see where everything is going,'” Goldblatt said. “Our creative services team made a version of the ‘Blockies’ that looked so much better. They’ve got stick movement and it’s better moving on the ice.”
The “Blockies” are now colloquially known as “Sparkies” behind the scenes. That’s because David Sparrgrove, a creative director at ESPN, re-modeled the players to be sleeker and better resembling their NHL inspirations. Silver Spoon, a New York-based real-time virtual production company, created the “bones” for those players and the “Big City Greens” characters.
One of the challenges was getting the proportions correct, as the ratios between the NHL players and their virtual proxies wasn’t 1-to-1. “Their heads are bigger, their arms are shorter, they only have four fingers. You can’t go in there and hand animate during a live game,” said Laura Herzing, an executive producer for Silver Spoon.
Another challenge: Taking traditionally 2D characters from “Big City Greens” and designing them for a 3D virtual environment. But the show indirectly helped out that effort when they created an episode based on virtual reality in Dec. 2022, which featured 3D characters.
“The crazy thing was to make the episode, we threw out the traditional animation pipeline and instead used software for video games instead of TV,” Shane Houghton said. “The look of the episode is incredible. After that technology was introduced to us, we knew we had to write an episode showcasing it.”
Silver Spoon’s previous work inspired another aspect of the “Big City Greens Classic”: In-game and intermission interviews with characters. They worked with CBS and Nickelodeon on the NFL “Nickmas” broadcast, which featured live commentary from Patrick Star of “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Voice actor Bill Fagerbakke wore a motion capture head harness and was able to interact in real time with the announcers.
“Big City Greens” voice actors will work with an ESPN crew in Glendale, Calif., on Tuesday night to provide commentary and interviews with the same technology. Cricket and Tilly will talk about playing in the game. During intermissions, there will be phone calls with “Big City Greens” characters like Driver Dave, who will “call in” to complain about the traffic the game has created. Wholesome Greg will gripe about the crowding of the Wholesome Foods parking lot. Then there’s Zamboni Tony, a new character created for the game.
Carter and Weekes will be able to see and hear the animated characters while broadcasting the game in their own motion capture suits. At first, the idea was to have real commentators cut in with the virtual game footage. ESPN suggested putting the commentators in the virtual environment themselves through motion capture technology. They’ll have the actual game and the virtual game in front of them, as synced up as possible, and then demonstrate some aspects of hockey between periods at a virtual goal net.
The announcers’ presence is another reminder that the “Big City Greens Classic” is, in fact, an NHL game broadcast, albeit one with a chicken referee.
The sound for the “Classic” will be from the traditional game broadcast. That offered its own challenge. Since the game will at Madison Square Garden, the goal horn and celebration for the Rangers will come in from the feed. But since the virtual game is being played at a “neutral site” in Times Circle, the broadcast will create a horn and celebration for Capitals goals as well.
Nelson said he has 49 “cameras” inside the virtual broadcast — as many as will cover the NFL Draft, for example — but doesn’t have the ability to see feeds from those cameras during the game. Instead, his team created a monitor wall with printed-out images of each camera angle as a reference point.
“As we go through the game, I know the angle that we’re looking for, even though I can’t see what’s going on in there,” Nelson said.
Many of those angles aren’t ones you’d find in a traditional broadcast.
“When you’re surveying an arena, you’re figuring out where you can put cameras and how much cameras cost, so you have to limit that,” Placey said. “But you can go into this world and place cameras wherever your wildest dreams can take you.”
In fact, some of those “wildest dreams” could end up on real NHL broadcasts.
IN SOME WAYS, the “Big City Greens” game will be a demo reel for what Placey hopes NHL coverage could look like one day.
“We’re over 40 camera angles — many of them traditional and some that we’ve made known that we’d like to have,” he said. “Cameras flying over the ice. Cameras following close behind players. You can show what can be done without having to go through the time and effort to figure out how to demo it in a real game.”
The game will also have “puck visuals,” with the speeding disc leaving behind a streak as it moves. While that might conjure images of the comet-tailed “glow puck” from the 1990s, Placey said there are two major advancements since that experiment: Puck tracking technology and the “second screen” experience.
Two other innovations he’s lobbied for on broadcasts that’ll be featured on the “Big City Greens” game: Full-time player identifications when they touch the puck and shot speeds presented on the ice for every shot that’s over 65 MPH.
(One idea the designers had for the “Big City” game: When the characters draw back to take a slapshot, there’s an animated comic-book graphic that says “POOF!” or “BANG!” that appears.)
Meanwhile, the NHL is continuing to refine its puck and player technology. Up next is an optical tracking solution that would add a significant amount of new data about body and stick positioning. That optical tracking system could show up next season, according to Lehanski.
For example, if a player is skating with the puck and then loses it, the current technology can determine who had the puck and where it traveled after the turnover. Optical tracking will illustrate how the puck was lost, perhaps through an unforced error or a defensive play.
“Once we have that, we will be able to have these virtual players, whatever they look like, be in the exact same position where their sticks and arm position are exactly the same,” he said.
For now, Lehanski is just thrilled to see years of technical refinement, trial and error lead to the “Big City Greens Classic,” having been awestruck when he saw the first game footage roll in.
“It’s almost like seeing a child graduate,” he said. “You’re kind of happy, you’re proud, you’re a little sad. It’s all those things. But when we actually saw it, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so amazing.'”
Jeff Legwold covers the Denver Broncos at ESPN. He has covered the Broncos for more than 20 years and also assists with NFL draft coverage, joining ESPN in 2013. He has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors since 1999, too. Jeff previously covered the Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans at previous stops prior to ESPN.
BOULDER, Colo. — For the horde of NFL talent evaluators and some bleachers full of fans, Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Friday that they all got to see the top two players available in this year’s NFL draft.
Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter were among the 16 Colorado players who took part in the school’s showcase event for scouts, coaches and personnel executives from every NFL team. And Deion Sanders said the two marquee players confirmed what he has known for a long time.
“It’s tremendous,” Sanders said. “… They should be going 1-2 [in the draft], that’s the way I feel about it. They are the two best players in this draft. … The surest bets in this draft are those two young men, and I didn’t stutter or stammer when I said that.”
Neither Shedeur Sanders nor Hunter took part in most of the position drills or physical testing, but Sanders had a throwing session for just under an hour and Hunter was one of the wide receivers who participated. Neither player worked out at the scouting combine earlier this year, so it was the first time Sanders had thrown in such a setting since the end of the season. He showed some full seven-step drops and play-action from the shotgun and under center.
“I think I did pretty good, to my expectations,” said Sanders, who set the career FBS accuracy mark in his two years at Colorado (71.8%) to go with his 4,134 passing yards and 37 touchdowns last season. “I know I did the best in college football right now, for sure.”
Asked after the throwing session whether he believed he was the best quarterback in the draft, Sanders said: “I feel like I’m the No. 1 quarterback, and that’s what I know. But at the end of the day, I’m not stuck on that because it’s about the situation, so whatever situation, whatever franchise believes in me, I’m excited to go. … I’m comfortable in any situation.”
Players Hunter, who did not speak to the media after the workout, and Sanders met with the Cleveland Browns contingent, including team co-owner Jimmy Haslam, on Thursday night in Boulder.
“They got me really full,” Sanders said. “I definitely needed to go to the sauna after that. … It was a good vibe.”
Said Deion Sanders said: “[I] spoke to the owner, truly delightful. He was engaging. … I think one of those guys is going to be there [at No. 2].”
Hunter, the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, did not do any defensive drills Friday, but he ran a full assortment of routes.
Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s brother, offered plenty of encouragement, shouting commentary and clapping after each throw, including “not a lot of quarterbacks can make that throw” after one deep completion.
The highly attended event — by NFL representatives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” complete with a large lighted “The Showcase” sign next to the drills.
Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Fred Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he will primarily be a wide receiver or a cornerback in the NFL depends “on the team that picks me.”
On Friday, Deion Sanders said “ain’t nobody like Travis.”
Hunter had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and 4 interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.
He played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.
Shilo Sanders, who hoped to show teams more speed than expected, ran a 4.52 40-yard dash after he measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds. He did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.
With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Shedeur Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard. Sheppard, who measured 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran the 40 in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 broad jump.
Henderson has been sidelined with a right intercostal strain and missed the first seven games of the big league campaign.
The 23-year-old Henderson will lead off and play shortstop against the host Royals.
Henderson was injured during a spring training game Feb. 27. He was fourth in American League MVP voting last season when he batted .281 and racked up career bests of 37 homers and 92 RBIs.
Henderson completed a five-game rehab stint at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday. He batted .263 (5-for-19) with two homers and four RBIs and played four games at shortstop and one as the designated hitter. He did commit three errors.
“I think everybody’s looking forward to having Gunnar back on the team,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said Thursday. “The rehab went really, really well. I talked to him a couple days ago, he feels great swinging the bat. The timing came, especially the last few days. He just had to get out there and get some reps defensively and get some games in, and it all went well.”
Baltimore optioned outfielder Dylan Carlson to Triple-A Norfolk to open up a roster spot. The 26-year-old was 0-for-4 with a run and RBI in two games this season.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
When New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attempted to assemble the best possible roster for the 2025 season this winter, the top priority was signing outfielder Juan Soto. Next was the need to replenish the starting rotation and bolster the bullpen. Then, days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, the lineup received one final significant reinforcement when first baseman Pete Alonso re-signed.
Acquiring a player with a singing career on the side didn’t make the cut.
“No, that is not on the list,” Stearns said with a smile.
Stearns’ decision not to re-sign Jose Iglesias, the infielder behind the mic for the viral 2024 Mets anthem “OMG,” was attributed to creating more roster flexibility. But it also hammered home a reality: The scrappy 2024 Mets, authors of a magical summer in Queens, are a thing of the past. The 2025 Mets, who will report to Citi Field for their home opener Friday, have much of the same core but also some prominent new faces — and the new, outsized expectations that come with falling two wins short of the World Series, then signing Soto to the richest contract in professional sports history.
But there’s a question surrounding this year’s team that you can’t put a price tag on: Can these Mets rekindle the magic — the vibes, the memes, the feel-good underdog story — that seemed to come out of nowhere to help carry them to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series last season?
“Last year the culture was created,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “It’s a matter of continuing it.”
For all the success Stearns has engineered — his small-market Milwaukee Brewers teams reached the postseason five times in eight seasons after he became the youngest general manager in history in 2015 — the 40-year-old Harvard grad, like the rest of his front office peers knows there’s no precise recipe for clubhouse chemistry. There is no culture projection system. No Vibes Above Replacement.
“Culture is very important,” Stearns said last weekend in the visiting dugout at Daikin Park before his club completed an opening-weekend series against the Houston Astros. “Culture is also very difficult to predict.”
Still, it seems the Mets’ 2024 season will be all but impossible to recreate.
There was Grimace, the purple McDonald’s blob who spontaneously became the franchise’s unofficial mascot after throwing out a first pitch in June. “OMG,” performed under Iglesias’ stage name, Candelita, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Digital Songs chart, before a remix featuring Pitbull was released in October. Citi Field became a karaoke bar whenever Lindor stepped into the batter’s box with The Temptations’ “My Girl” as his walk-up song. Alonso unveiled a lucky pumpkin in October. They were gimmicks that might have felt forced if they hadn’t felt so right.
“I don’t know if what we did last year could be replicated because it was such a chaos-filled group,” Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said. “I don’t know if that’s replicable because there’s just too many things going on. I don’t know if that’s a sustainable model. But I think the expectation of winning is really important. I think establishing what we did last year and coming into this year where people are like, ‘Oh, no, that’s what we’re expecting to do,’ makes it different. It’s always a different vibe whenever you feel like you’re the hunter versus being the hunted.”
For the first two months last season, the Mets were terrible hunters. Lindor was relentlessly booed at Citi Field during another slow start. The bullpen got crushed. The losses piled up. The Mets began the season 0-5 and sunk to rock bottom on May 29 when reliever Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the stands during a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that dropped the team to 22-33.
That night, the Mets held a players-only meeting. From there, perhaps coincidentally, everything changed. The Mets won the next day, and 67 of their final 107 games.
This year, to avoid an early malaise and to better incorporate new faces like Soto and Opening Day starter Clay Holmes, players made it a point to hold meetings during spring training to lay a strong foundation.
“At the end of the day, we know who we are and that’s the beauty of our club,” Alonso said. “Not just who we are talent-wise, but who each individual is as a man and a personality. For us, our major, major strength is our collective identity as a unit.”
Organizationally, the Mets are attempting a dual-track makeover: Becoming perennial World Series contenders while not taking themselves too seriously.
The commemorative purple Grimace seat installed at Citi Field in September — Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 in right field — remains there as part of a two-year contract. Last week, the franchise announced it will feature a New York-city themed “Five Borough” race at every home game — with a different mascot competing to represent each borough. For a third straight season, USA Today readers voted Citi Field — home of the rainbow cookie egg roll, among many other innovative treats — as having the best ballpark food in baseball.
In the clubhouse, their identity is evolving.
“I’m very much in the camp that you can’t force things,” Mets starter Sean Manaea said. “I mean, you can, but you don’t really end up with good results. And if you wait for things to happen organically, then sometimes it can take too long. So, there’s like a nudging of sorts. It’s like, ‘Let’s kind of come up with something, but not force it.’ So there’s a fine balance there and you just got to wait and see what happens.”
Stearns believes it starts with what the Mets can control: bringing positive energy every day and fostering a family atmosphere. It’s hard to quantify, but vibes undoubtedly helped fuel the Mets’ 2024 success. It’ll be a tough act to follow.
“It’s fluid,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I like where guys are at as far as the team chemistry goes and things like that and the connections and the relationships. But it’ll continue to take some time. And winning helps, clearly.”