There’s no sleeping at the monitors for Kraken video staffers Tim Ohashi and Brady Morgan after the opening faceoff.
It takes mere seconds for video analyst Morgan to call out “Good entry!” over his headset to assistant coach Jessica Campbell on the Kraken bench and goalie coach Steve Briere in the overhead pressbox as a puck is carried over the visiting Chicago Blackhawks’ blue line. Not long after, Morgan says “That’s yucky!” into the headset as a jumble of Chicago players enter the Kraken zone seemingly just ahead of the puck.
But a Kraken defender quickly clears the puck out.
“Doesn’t matter!” Morgan tells his headset audience of his prior offside assessment.
Morgan, seated alongside video coach Ohashi at a coaching room table adjacent to the Kraken dressing room at Climate Pledge Arena, renders blue-line opinions throughout the Thursday night game. The duo stares at a bank of six television screens – two with “coach’s camera” overhead angles, two of the Kraken Hockey Network (KHN) broadcast, another of the video scoreboard feed, and a “hawk eye” screen in which eight different angles can be toggled through – along with additional laptops and tablets at their fingertips. They’ll hit a keyboard stroke for an instant rewind if something at the blue line immediately doesn’t look quite right.
Zone entries are critical, representing the most frequent cause of the coach’s challenges and overturning of goals. Other times, challenges are usually for goaltender interference and occasionally a missed play stoppage.
“If you’re going to tell them to challenge a goal, you’ve got to be right,” Morgan said. “If you’re wrong, it’s going to be a bad night.”
Ohashi, who spends most of the game live coding video clips from the entirety of the game, won’t hesitate to chime in if he has a better look.
Watching the lines isn’t all the pair do. By night’s end, they’ll have cut 1,569 different clips and grouped them into specific buckets – faceoffs, shot attempts, blocked shots, zone entries and breakouts, forechecks and goalie saves among them. They’ll deliver a portable hard drive of clips to each individual coach as they come into the room between periods.
Morgan’s headset links to Campbell and Briere are for more than suggesting challenges. He and Ohashi provide updates on things such as which player is winning faceoffs from a particular side or help coaches review footage of plays they missed in real-time.
The coaches on the bench carry league-issued iPads to access clips Ohashi and Morgan send them.
With under eight minutes remaining in the period, the Blackhawks have a rapid flurry of scoring chances -- with defenseman Ryker Evans deflecting a dangerous Nick Foligno shot wide of the net.
“You want me to grab that as a highlight?” Ohashi asks Morgan about the shot block.
“I didn’t see it,” Morgan replies.
“OK, I’ll put it in,” Ohashi tells him.
Just over a minute later, Kraken center Shane Wright nearly deflects a shot into Chicago’s net. Morgan rewinds to see exactly what happened.
“Yeah, that’s tipped,” he tells coaches via his headset. “That’s a Grade-A chance by Shane.”
As the horn sounds to end the period, Ohashi and Morgan place portable drives at each coach’s desk. Players trudge to locker stalls down the hall and the coaches enter the room, with head coach Dan Bylsma having a quick word about a video he’d like to see.
“Honestly, with Dan, it’s probably the most variable of any coach I’ve ever worked with,” said Ohashi, who spent five seasons as a video analyst with his boyhood favorite Washington Capitals prior to joining the Kraken their expansion campaign. “With most coaches, I’d say the tendency is to watch scoring chances. With Dan, it’s more about whatever area of the game he feels he needs.”
Campbell uses her portable drive to study Kraken's performance during the period’s lone power play, while assistant Bob Woods examines specific zone breakouts by defensemen. Briere views footage of goalie Joey Daccord.
The second period begins with Jared McCann helping snap a scoreless tie by taking a pass right at the blue line ahead of feeding Matty Beniers for a one-timed goal.
“We’ve got a good goal!” Morgan shouts into his headset above the crowd’s roar, indicating McCann is onside at the line. “Good goal!”
From there, the period’s biggest video highlight has nothing to do with zone entries.
Evans breaks his stick as the period winds down and gets handed a clean one on-ice by winger Eeli Tolvanen – defensemen needing sticks more than forwards to prevent goals -- who then skates to the bench and has a seated McCann hand him his stick to use while play continues.
The Kraken are then called for icing and aren’t allowed to make a line change, so Evans skates by the bench to retrieve his backup stick from equipment managers who have it ready for a quick handoff to him. Evans then hands Tolvanen back the original stick he’d lent him while Tolvanen -- also skating by the bench -- hands McCann back his loaner stick all within seconds of each other as an ensuing faceoff is about to take place.
“Watch overhead,” Morgan says to Ohashi while rewinding. “There’s a three-man stick handoff coming up here.”
Sure enough, the overhead replay has an impressive sequence.
“That’s quite the handoff and choreographed expertise by the guys out there,” Morgan said, referencing equipment managers Jeff Camelio, Kris Stierwalt, and James Stucky as well as athletic trainers Cole Harding and Phil Varney. “Quite honestly, that goes into our highlight reel. We do like to give shout-outs to the guys being quick.”
Several moments later, as the KHN broadcast feed comes back on from a commercial break, analyst Eddie Olczyk also mentions on-air having also spotted the triple switch. Ohashi and Morgan smile at one another.
