Inside the Bubble Blog: Hats off to staffs in Edmonton, Toronto

NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer and League executive vice president of events Dean Matsuzaki -- aka the Mayer of Hub City and Dean of the Secure Zone -- are embedded in the NHL hub cities for the Stanley Cup Qualifiers and the duration of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

They each will be writing a blog for NHL.com from Edmonton and Toronto to give fans the latest happenings from inside the bubbles.
Here are their entries for Tuesday:

Steve Mayer in Edmonton

For most of our team, instead of life in the bubble, it should be called life in the arena.

We get to Rogers Place by 8 a.m. and we walk out just before midnight.

Three games a day and each one seems to be getting a little better from the standpoint of coordination with our set design, game presentation and broadcasting. We like the prospects of what we've put together.

As everybody has seen over the course of the first few days, we've created a really visual environment that is unique to this year's tournament. We really hope that our fans are enjoying what it looks like.

We also are trying to have a little fun and not take ourselves too seriously.

We got a fun response Sunday when we put up a graphic during the round-robin game between the St. Louis Blues and the Colorado Avalanche that said, "Tonight's attendance is 0." Then, huge props to two of my team members with the best arms in the business, Angela Wallin and Francesca Ranieri (who, by the way, moonlights as my assistant), for throwing the hats onto the ice for Connor McDavid's hat trick for the Edmonton Oilers on Monday.

It looked like Angela and Francesca might have played some frisbee in their day.

Credit to my team. We've been brainstorming so many ideas.

My only regret is we weren't ready when Andrei Svechnikov had a hat trick for the Carolina Hurricanes earlier in the day in Toronto. But we regrouped quickly to be ready for the games after that and, before you knew it, we had another hat trick.

I can't believe how viral that moment went.

Every day seems to present a different challenge but we're all about the solutions and the problems. I was really proud of our security team Monday. We had a terrible rainstorm that blew into Edmonton - wind, thunder and lightning - and one of the fences by the Sutton Place Hotel got blown down and beat up pretty badly.

Within seconds, our security team activated to form a human fence to protect the integrity of our bubble while a new fence immediately was constructed, and the problem was averted.

So much credit should go to Bob Pollicino and J.T. Klingenmeier, who head the security team here in Edmonton. They are managing close to 150 security personnel and health ambassadors who have more to do in a bubble than at a normal event.

They are the ones who have the unenviable job of going up to our players and reminding them to wear their masks (believe me, that's not fun) and making sure we're all protected and as safe as possible.

I feel safer here than I would at my home in New Jersey. That's a great credit to them and our amazing medical team.

When all this is said and done, it will be because of these great people and their expertise that we get to the finish line.

I'm also really proud of Dean and his team in Toronto. We're watching them from afar and they're doing an amazing job.

Even though I'd love to throw in a dig or two to rile them up, that's impossible for me to do because I'm so proud of everything that everyone is doing there.

Staying safe in Edmonton. Talk to you in a few days.

Dean Matsuzaki in Toronto

We are now right in the midst of several long days of tripleheader action at Scotiabank Arena. It is both very exciting and quite tiring. I usually arrive at the arena about 8 a.m. and there are already equipment staff in the dressing rooms setting up for players in the early game to arrive at approximately 10am. Mornings are generally the best time to do any conference calls and catch up on e-mails as you never know exactly where the day will take you.

Yesterday we worked with our Hockey Operations Group, the arena cleaning staff and our Facility Hygiene officer to further optimize our cleaning and transition of team dressing rooms and spaces. We don't have the luxury of six locker rooms like our colleagues in the Edmonton hub city, so on these tripleheader days we have to be as efficient as possible cleaning and sanitizing space used in the 12 pm game so we can get equipment and gear loaded in and set up in the same spaces for the 8 pm game. After a little tweaking yesterday, it seems we have come up with an even more efficient process while maintaining all sanitization protocols.

Away from the rink we've had a couple rainy days in Toronto (or so I'm told, I haven't seen a lot of daylight the last two days). While the first few days in the bubble were all about outdoor space and activities, it seems as though teams have gotten quite creative in terms of indoor activities. The golf simulators at the Fairmont were in full swing (pardon the pun) and the tennis and pickleball courts at Hotel X were quite popular as well. One team held their own pingpong tournament setting up a table in the elevator lobby on their floor. I also feel a lot of players have been taking advantage of the separate Wi-Fi network our NHL Tech Ops staff set up at the Fairmont hotel to cater to the video game aficionados.

That's it for today from the Toronto Hub, signing off from a very chilly Scotiabank Arena.