As Stanley Cup final moves to Montreal, NBC Sports’ production team stays in Tampa

TAMPA — As NBC Sports Network broadcasts the next two games of the Stanley Cup final from Montreal, much of the production’s heavy lifting will be done from inside trailers stationed at the players parking lot of Amalie Arena.

Travel to and from Canada is still very restricted, and the NHL and Canadian government worked to allow the league’s national TV rightsholders to travel across the border to cover the final.

Around 30-35 members of NBC’s broadcast crew traveled to Montreal, including its announcing team and most of its camera crew. But that’s still a fraction of the 80 people that would typically be on site this year for a broadcast or the 100-plus staffers that would be there in a normal playoff year.

Among those who stayed in Tampa are the broadcast’s producer and director, who will communicate with the crew in Montreal remotely from production trucks at Amalie.

The broadcast will be mostly produced from Tampa, with the exception of some graphics that will be added at NBC’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn., something NBC had been doing in large part due to the pandemic to avoid overcrowding the truck.

Everyone who is traveling back and forth has had to quarantine when not at the arena — even in Tampa, where there are no longer any restrictions.

“To put all of our crew through that was just logistically going to be a nightmare for us, to be honest with you,” NBC Sports coordinating producer John McGuinness said. There’s a lot of red tape that our announcers have to go through. There’s quarantining. Even in Tampa, they’re not allowed out of their hotel rooms.”

NBC will have its its own camera feeds but will also rely on Canadian rightsholders Rogers SportsNet (English) and TVA Sports (French) for additional feeds. NBC is providing the Canadian networks supplemental feeds for the games in Tampa.

Still, this is a tremendous step forward for broadcasters.

During the regular season, broadcasters called games taking place in Canada from TV feeds. Last year’s playoff bubble games in Toronto and Edmonton were called from the NBC Sports studios in Stamford, Conn. For most of the past year, games have been called remotely. That might not seem like a big deal, but their angles are limited to the feeds they’re able to get, so this will offer a full, broader picture of the ice.

This will be NBC’s last hurrah as the national TV rightsholder before the U.S. rights to NHL games go to ESPN next season.

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