Inside the NHL Bubble Blog: Hockey is back 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 Wednesday:

Steve Mayer in Edmonton

Day 3 in the bubble in Edmonton was a day where we anticipated our first game action.
This is why we came here. This is why we're trying to keep everybody safe. This is what we hope: once we start, we're moving onto a finish.

Everybody on the staff was so excited that Tuesday was going to be the day when the action finally began. All day long you could feel it as we prepared for the first game.

There were rehearsals all day long led by John Bochiaro, who heads the game presentation charge here in Edmonton. His responsibility is to coordinate all that our audience is going to see in the multiple LED screens that surround the rink.

John and I have put together what we think is an extremely visual approach to hockey that our audience has never seen before. We're going to start slow and work our way up as the tournament goes on.

It was also another great day for Bill Miller, who is our event operation lead. Bill has worked tirelessly over the course of the past two weeks to get every single aspect of the bubble in working order.

I might have the ideas, but Bill is the one who leads the execution and there's no one better in operations and no one who has a better attitude to get the work done. Bill is the first one to the arena in the morning and he's the last one to leave.

He doesn't like to take credit, but he deserves it, especially for this effort.

For me, the day focused on what will be our opening ceremony when the Stanley Cup Qualifiers begin on Saturday and coordinating back to New York with the great team of producers and editors that are building the different videos that will be featured in the opening.

It also included a very special surprise taping that we did remotely. But everyone will have to wait to find out what that is.

It felt good for all our events staff to get extremely positive feedback from those inside the bubble. Whether it was a coach, a general manager or a player, the feedback has been great, and we are really happy with the way things have gone since the players arrived on Sunday.

Finally, credit goes to the father-son ice gurus, Dan and Mike Craig. The ice is great. They did an amazing job to get it ready for the action.

Looking out on the ice and seeing the Oilers and the Flames in our first exhibition game in Edmonton gave us such a great feeling that all the hard work is beginning to pay off.

We've received great reports from our testing group and, as Day 3 came to a close, we were certainly pointing towards the beginning of our Stanley Cup Qualifiers.

Dean Matsuzaki in Toronto

The second day with everyone in the bubble was another good day. We dropped the puck, and we played hockey, so that's excellent.

My day began like probably the last 12 days have, with a COVID-19 test in the morning, and I was in and out of the testing room in probably less than three minutes. It was an easy and smooth process.

I went downstairs to the office in the Fairmont Royal York and checked in with the group. Lauren Wolman, manager of events, had been up since the crack of dawn to get a food truck parked within our compound. That will come online tomorrow, so we're all looking forward to yet another food option in the bubble.

We did get a little feedback asking for menu items for people with dietary restrictions -- vegan options and things like that -- so we met with the hotel about adding options and looked into food delivery places that can fit all dietary needs. We've got that information out to the teams now. The Events team is doing a great job keeping up with any requests we get.

Late morning I made my way over to Scotiabank Arena. I talked to security about our perimeter and fence lines as we had a wind issue out at BMO Field yesterday that affected one fence line. We got that secured.

Come lunch time, I found out that with a lot more people in the bubble, there were a lot more lunch options on the menu at the arena, so I was able to have a little sushi for lunch. That was a nice welcome change, a little variety.

And then we got right into hockey. We had a doubleheader here, with the Philadelphia Flyers playing the Pittsburgh Penguins at 4 p.m. ET and the Montreal Canadiens playing the Toronto Maple Leafs at 8. There were some last-minute changes with game presentation, but we got that all settled.

It's a little bit of a surreal experience without the fans in the audience, but once the puck dropped, you were watching hockey. We heard some good comments from people back home watching on television.

With the first game going into overtime, it put a little pressure on our turnover between games. I think we had less than an hour from the end of the first game to warmup for the second game, the crew changed out a lot of the dasher ads on the boards, benches and cleaning staff sanitized the player and penalty benches. The timing made me a little nervous, but it all happened just as we planned it out.

First doubleheader is in the books, I am heading back to the hotel and hope to catch some of the game from Edmonton, get some rest, and we will be ready to play three games tomorrow!