How much has video evolved in hockey? Four Blues coaches spanning three decades discuss the advancements (2024)

From VCRs flashing 12:00 and tapes filling rooms to laptops logging every move and hard drives housing multiple seasons, the evolution of video in the NHL is as eye-popping as any recent growth in the game.

What once required endless hours and lugging recording machines from city to city can now be performed in minutes with a simple click.

It used to take days for a player to see his individual shifts, and now they are loaded onto his iPad by the time he pulls in the driveway after a home game or steps onto the team’s plane following a road game.

Sean Ferrell, who is in hisfifth season as the Blues’ video coach, is aware of the relative ease of some of his tasks compared what his predecessors went through, but certainly not to the point where it makes him feel guilty.

“No, because the one thing technology has done, it means we’re going through 10 times more data, whittling it down to what we think is really important,” Ferrell said. “It has provided us with an opportunity to look at things so much quicker that you look at so much more.”

In order to get a better feel for how far NHL game footage and its usage has come, The Athletic tracked down three of the Blues’ previous video coaches — Arne Pappin, Jamie Kompon and Scott Masters — to take us inside the Blues’ video room from 1994-2017.

Pappin, who was hired by New York Rangers coach Mike Keenan in 1993, estimates that there were only about five video coaches in the NHL back then. The Rangers were using VCRs at the time, but invested $30,000-$40,000 in a new program that had advanced editing capabilities.

“We got with a company and they sold us on this system that you could do multiple tapings of the same thing,” Pappin said. “It was all in unison, and you could edit and splice off that. It was pretty fancy.”

But back then, being a video coach was equal parts MTV and NHL, as Keenan would often ask Pappin to choreograph musical clips.

“If (Mark) Messier was in a 10-game slump or didn’t have a goal in five games, Mike would say, ‘Hey, put something together,’” Pappin said. “I can’t remember what the song was, ‘Messiah,’ or something like that for Messier, and I can’t remember who sang it, ‘Goo Goo Daddies’ or whoever they are. But in the old days, I would hook a CD player into the VCR and match the video highlights with the music in the background. They were like motivational videos.”

Pappin’s credits also included a montage of Mariah Carey’s hit song “Hero,” inserting clips of a New York Yankees World Series parade.

“That was Mike’s song, that whole year, that song, so we did a video to that, giving them a visual of what a parade might look like if we won the Stanley Cup,” he said. “He wanted us to visualize what it would mean to win in New York.”

Pappin was also in charge of pre-scouting, so he had to record the upcoming opponents’ previous three games — historically called the A, B and C games, with “A” being the most recent, “B” two games ago and “C” three games ago. So if a three-game road trip was coming up, that meant manually taping – and often times watching in their entirety – nine games.

Pappin did not travel with the Rangers regularly, so while the games were being recorded both home and away, there was no real use of the film during trips.

“We were pretty good, we won all the time, so there wasn’t much video going on,” he said. “On the road games, if there was a couple of games back-to-back, they really didn’t go over the video until they came home.”

The Rangers went 52-24-8 in theregular season in 1993-94, and evidently that Mariah Carey tribute worked, as they beat Vancouver in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals to end a 54-year championship drought.

After the season, Keenan and Pappin came to St. Louis, and although they never brought the Blues a Cup, they bought the identical video recording system they had in New York. A room was built off the coaches’ office that had four TVs and seven VCRs.

The number of NHL clubs employing video coaches “exploded to 15 or 16” that summer, Pappin recalls, and the data they were collecting and video they were recording was starting to have an in-game impact.

At the time, the league was not officially charting statistics, so Pappin tracked categories such as shots and scoring chances from the video room, while Mike Caruso, who was then the Blues’ director of team services and seated in the pressbox, monitored faceoff wins and losses, and ice time.

“It was a lot of the stuff that the NHL does now for the teams, but back then, we didn’t have anything like that,” Pappin said.

During the games, Pappin received requests from assistant coaches Bob Berry and Roger Neilson to have specific clips ready for Keenan to watch during the intermissions.

“They called me in the office on the headphones and say, ‘Hey, Mike wants to see this when he walks in’ and so I’d have to rewind the tape,” Pappin said. “I’d have to look up and say ‘Oh, that’s 1:15:43 on the tape timer.’ The period could be over and it could be 2:30:04, so I’d have to rewind as fast as I could and get it to that spot before Mike walked in. You talk about stressful moments, those were because you couldn’t just dial up 1:15:43 – boom! You had to rewind it.”

One game, Keenan wanted to see a sequence from the previous period, and Pappin didn’t have the clip cued up in time.

“We were searching for it, and he slapped me in the back of the head and walked out,” Pappin recalled. “It was just Mike being Mike.”

In those days, the home team supplied both the visitors and the referees with a VHS tape of the game, so after the final horn, Pappin would take a copy down to each of their rooms before they left the rink. Well, one night, he nervously passed along tapes that he knew didn’t have all the action.

“Back then, you had 120-minute tapes and 180-minute tapes, and the speed you were using on the recordings determined how much tape you were going to use,” Pappin said. “One of the games, for some reason, went long. There might have been a few fights, so ‘Twister’ was probably playing. Well, you can’t change the speed while it’s recording, so I ran out of tape and missed like the last two-and-a-half minutes of the game. I gave Mike one, but luckily I never heard anything about it.”

As much asfilm was being integrated into the game in the mid-1990s, though, it was still viewed as a coaching tool, and the players’ interest was limited.

“Roger Neilson did a lot of video when he was with us, and the guys didn’t really want to do any more because Roger would do two hours of it,” Pappin said. “You’re sitting there for two hours, and you might only be two minutes of the conversation because you’re a fourth-line guy, so I think they were done after they left the meeting.”

After Keenan was fired in 1996, the Blues hired Joel Quenneville and, based on a recommendation from the video coach in Colorado, the Blues offered the vacant position to Jamie Kompon.

“I said, ‘Listen, I don’t know anything about video,’” Kompon said. “I told Joel, ‘If I plug in a VCR and it flashed 12 o’clock, it was going to flash 12 o’clock until I unplugged it, because I had no idea how to set it.’ He said, ‘But if you know the game, the technology will be easy.’

“I’ll never forget, they took me down to the video room and it looked like the co*ckpit of an airplane. He said, ‘Welcome to the St. Louis Blues.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ He laughed and he goes, ‘No, don’t worry about it, you’ll iron out the kinks.’”

Kompon went to work, but because Keenan never allowed electricians inside the building then known as Kiel Center, no one knew how to work the equipment.

“I ended up finding a name of someone on a bill (receipt) in the bottom of a filing cabinet,” Kompon said. “The gentleman was so nice and gracious with his time, walking me through everything. It was a process, but he showed me how to work the decks and everything.”

The stress of the job revolved around the reliance of the equipment, and the time it took to make sure everything recorded. If one of the Blues’ upcoming opponents was a West Coast club that was playing at home, Kompon had tobe certain that nothing was preventing the pre-scout tape from rolling properly.

“We had one of those big satellite dishes, and you were worried if it was going to tape because the coordinates may not be right,” he said. “Is satellite moving, is it not moving? So you’d stay there until 10 o’clock at night to make sure that the game starts the way you need it to start.”

On the road, the Blues were carrying TVs with built-in VCRs, which weren’t easy to replace when they malfunctioned.

“I remember one time our VCR blew up and I was in a panic trying to find one,” Kompon said. “So, I’m taking a cab from store to store, and back then it wasn’t like there was a Best Buy on every corner. You had to go find a specialty store. You’re running around and your heart is racing.”

Around the same time, Masters was beginning an internship with the Florida Panthers.

“I carried around a 16-inch TV with a built-in VCR in a hockey bag, and we would wrap it in towels and tape it in hockey tape so that it wouldn’t break,” Masters remembers. “We went through three or four of those TV/VCRs per season because they were thrown on planes and thrown off planes. I remember we had one in the locker room and the coach (Duane Sutter) turned around and kicked it during the intermission, breaking the screen. We had to go the whole rest of the trip without video because the coach broke our machine. I would always call this company and say, ‘Yeah, I need another one,’ and they were like, ‘What are you doing with them? You’re going through five, six of these per year.’”

At that point, video coaches had started to splice together VHS tapes of different units – power play, penalty kill, etc. – but in the early 2000s, re-watching the game still meant singling out mistakes in players’ minds.

“I remember they would pause it and you would have that grainy thing going across the TV screen,” said Blues defenseman Jay Bouwmeester, who was an 18-year-old rookie with the Panthers in 2002-03. “Some guys, if you knew you screwed up, you were hoping that that (grainy line) would come up and you could hide on the video a little bit.”

In fact, Kompon learned a valuable lesson: Don’t wheel the VCR into the locker room too soon before a meeting.

“The players would take the tape out and put a movie in, or they’d fast-forward it until the end so the coach goes in and hits ‘play’ and it’s over,” he said. “It was a daily prank. I would always roll the tape machine in 30 seconds before the meeting so that they couldn’t mess with me.”

That’s not to say Kompon didn’t turn the tables on the players a few times to keep their eyes on the TV.

“We were going to L.A. one time and the girls in L.A. dress to the nines,” Kompon said. “We were showing them the pre-scout tape and I spliced in a couple of ladies in the stands just to kind of get their attention. It was actually footage of a Lakers’ game, but they didn’t know that. It would just be a four-second blip halfway through the video, but they had to keep watching because they didn’t know if it would happen again.”

Back in the day, players were just less apt to want to analyze themselves, according to Kompon.

“A lot of the guys trusted their instincts,” he said. “There were fighters, and they wanted to see lefties and righties and what they were about. So you had to make sure that some of the fights were ready for them to watch when they came in in the morning. Some of the goaltenders, they wanted to see certain shooters, or if there was a new guy up from the minors, what he does. But that was about it.”

If a player did ask for his specific shifts, “it would ruin my day,” Masters said. “It was just awful because one player, one game, would take two or three hours. You would have two VCRs, one playing and one recording, and then you would have a print out of the NHL stat sheets showing when a player entered the game. So you would fast forward through the game, press ‘record’ when that player hit the ice, and then hit ‘pause’ when he came off. It would be an all-day thing.”

That all changed while Kompon was still with the Blues, who were one of the first NHL franchises to use the XOS system. It was a computer that stood about two feet tall and three feet wide, but it was revolutionary at the time.

“It was the best thing since sliced bread,” Kompon said. “All the video was right there for you. Everything was accessible, you know what I mean. You had all of your power plays together, you could break it down, you could back things up. It was so much easier. It was like heaven.”

A company called Sydex Pucks came out with a similar system, which “married” the video with NHL stats, and now coaches no longer had to start and stop the tape to cut up clips of specific units or individual shifts.

Masters used Sydex Pucks in Florida and after replacing Kompon in 2006, he recommended it to Blues coach Mike Kitchen.

“Sydex sports had a system where they already broke it down and that was key for all aspects,” Masters said. “I worked with Roberto Luongo and he always wanted to watch every ‘touch’ – every time he touched the puck. I wouldn’t be able to do that with the old technology, but with Sydex, all I did was hit the letter ‘G’ when Roberto touched the puck and it would automatically cut the video five seconds before and five seconds after. So when he would come in, I would have those all ready to go, and he’d be on his way in five minutes.”

The other advantage at this time was the transition to DVDs.

“When I took over for Jamie, he was a pack rat and saved every tape that he ever made,” Masters said. “It was crazy. There were thousands of tapes in that room and he just kept them for reference.”

Instead, they made that area of the Blues’ practice facility a space for three cubicles, where players could come in and watch their shifts on computers.

“If it was a young player, they would never want to ask for shifts, but this way they could easily just come in, sit down, press play and be done in 10-15 minutes,” Masters said. “It was easy access. We didn’t make it a requirement, we just made it so that they felt comfortable being able to do it on their own.”

But as Masters’ time in St. Louis went on, technology progressed at even more rapid rate. He had four TVs and four DVD recorders installed in his basem*nt and began recording pre-scout tapes at home, and eventually, the team eliminated the cubicles in his office, too. Players could download their shifts onto computers from the club’s hard drive and later, using the signal from a Wifi hotspot in Masters’ backpack, load them onto their iPads.

“It just made it more efficient,” he said. “I would never actually have to talk to a player or see them and he would have all of his shifts without me knowing anything.”

In 2012, Masters left for Colorado and was replaced by Danny Brooks, who lasted one season before Ferrell took over in 2013 under Ken Hitchco*ck. Ferrell had some editing experience, but not at the NHL level, which was a bit overwhelming at first.

“Hitch wanted things quickly, and rightfully so,” Ferrell said. “I remember my first couple of games where he was saying, ‘C’mon, c’mon, c’mon’ and you just feel the heat. You’re like ‘Oh my goodness,’ but you figure it out. I think everybody goes through a little bit of that.”

The Blues use both XOS and Sydex Pucks, but the tools are even more sophisticated. At home games, Ferrell sits in an office that is 15-feet by 15-feet with two 65-inch TVs and four laptops. He can look like Elton John on a piano, keeping his fingers on 25 “hot buttons” to mark specific sequences during the game.

“We call it the ‘logging’ laptop,” Ferrell said. “Each of those keys are representative of a particular play: D-zone exits, O-zone entries, D-zone coverage, neutral-zone transition, forecheck, power play breakout, on and on. That’s been around for a long time, but now through multiple drop-down menus on the laptop, I can recall all of our zone exits in between periods, and we can see what the opponent is trying to do to shut us down. … The fact that it’s so fast now, the decisions to change or stay the course have almost become immediate.”

How immediate?

Well, beginning with last year’s postseason, the NHL approved the use of iPads on the bench, and the information Ferrell is marking is what the coaches have at their fingertips.

“They can use it like a DVR and scrub back in time and just watch whatever they want or with those same drop-down menus and show players something that might have happened 10 seconds ago and talk to them with visuals and instruction,” Ferrell said.

Blues assistant coach Darryl Sydor can be seen during games using the iPads with his defensem*n.

“He’ll pull up your shift and show you maybe a better gap or what you could have done,” Blues defenseman Joel Edmundson said. “It’s nice to see mid-game because you can correct your mistake and be ready for the next shift. It’s an instant change and I think it’s a big part of the game now.”

Another change that has an immediate impact is instant replay, which Ferrell is in charge of. He watches the “Hawkeye” system from the video room and suggests to Blues coach Mike Yeo whether to use the coach’s challenge. His keen eye caught an offside play Tuesday night against New Jersey that overturned a Devils’ goal and enabled the Blues to win 3-2 in a shootout.

“You’re making sure that you’re marking all these different plays and you’re watching Hawkeye,” Ferrell said. “It’s really good for people with ADD because there’s really no down time.”

While all that’s going on, Ferrell is also fielding requests for specific shifts to be clipped for the coaches to watch at the intermission. And while Ferrell doesn’t expect a whack on the back of the head if he doesn’t have it ready, like Keenan did to Pappin, there is pressure.

“The job today still has lots of similarities, it’s just the expectation of what’s available now compared to what the expectation was then is different,” Ferrell said. “Arne used to write down the VCR time and then rewind and rewind. I’m not doing that, but what’s funny is with the crunch time on these laptops to compress the video, I’m sitting here tapping my fingers going ‘C’mon.’ I know the guys are going to be in thelocker room in one-and-a-half minutes because that’s how long it takes to walk from the bench to here, and if it’s not compressed in time, then they can’t access it.”

Players still access their shifts on their iPads, but now they’re automatically uploaded after each period. But what’s different today is that coaches can draw sketches on video clips – ala NFL analyst John Madden — and leave voice messages.

“The video sharing capability now between players and coaches is off the charts,” Ferrell said. “You can drop telestrations on a video clip and talk over the recording, so that while they’re watching they’re hearing what you’re saying, ‘Hey I think maybe if you would’ve looked at this … or great job!’ It’s almost like having a team app where you can have a chat room with your defensive core and they can respond. We’re not necessarily using it that way yet, but it’s happening. We have the capability of doing things that three years ago we couldn’t do, and it changes every year.”

Everything, including pre-scout videos, are now recorded in an iCloud, saving video coaches the time of manually taping games.

“It’s almost embarrassing to admit how easy it is now compared to what they had to go through,” Ferrell said. “I go into this website and pull up the NHL, the current season, and there’s a list of every game through last night for the whole entire season. All I do is click it and say ‘add it’ and download. And you can program it too, so you can set it up seven days in advance.”

All games are kept on a microserver, which can hold up to three seasons of every NHL game, eliminating the need for storing physical recordings.

“I learned that the hard way, I guess, three seasons ago,” Ferrell said. “We burned up to six DVDs a night, and when I got here, I had a stash of maybe 100 left. I called the guy that we had ordered them from before, and he was like, ‘Do you want me to just duplicate the last order?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.’ Well at the same time that I placed an order for 700 DVDs with the St. Louis Blues logo on them, we get this email that comes out and says, ‘Due to the fact that technology has come so far, we’re going to quit using the DVDs.’ So I’m sitting on 700 of these darn things.”

Ferrell’s predecessors can hardly comprehend what’s taken place since they left the job.

“The guys can see what they’re doing now, they’re more dialed in, which makes it more efficient for everybody,” said Pappin, now a scout with Anaheim.

“If I went back to being a video coach, I’m sure I could learn it,” said Kompon, now an assistant coach with Winnipeg. “But boy, oh boy, there’s so much to learn.”

Masters, now a scout with Montreal, can’t help but reflect on the lost time.

“I think my wife would probably want some of those hours back,” Masters said. “Video coaching jobs are just so time-consuming. Technology has saved I don’t know how many hours and just made the job so much easier. You can get a lot more stuff done that you just couldn’t in the old days.”

(Top photo of Blues video coachSean Ferrell: Jeremy Rutherford/The Athletic)