Game On

By Patrick Bohn, January 6, 2021

Alumnus Steve Mayer ’84 helps create the NHL’s season-saving bubble.

By using massive LED screens and the skills of the best lighting technician in Los Angeles, the NHL was able to create an electric atmosphere in arenas — even without fans.

(Photo by Andy Devlin/NHLI via Getty Images)

Like millions of people this past spring, Steve Mayer ’84 was stunned when the coronavirus pandemic swept across the country, causing businesses and industries everywhere to pause activities for employee health and safety.

The National Hockey League — where Mayer serves as the senior executive vice president and chief content officer — was no exception. The NHL paused its season on March 12, with 189 games remaining in the season, including the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And no one knew if it would be able to resume.

“When it happened, it was shocking,” Mayer said. “None of us knew the impact it would have, so we got together as a league and asked how we were going to finish the season. We thought the stoppage was going to last a week or two.

“On a normal day, producing the Stanley Cup Finals is an accomplishment, and in these circumstances, it was an achievement. We all knew what we were doing was something we’d never do again.”

Steve Mayer ’84, senior executive vice president and chief content officer, National Hockey League

“Then after a few weeks passed, and we realized the stoppage was going to last a lot longer, we started asking different questions,” he continued. “’Can we come back? What’s it going to look like? How can we protect our players, fans and staff?’ The world had never seen anything like this.”

In the early days of the stoppage, before a return-to-play plan had been hammered out, Mayer’s first order of business was to get the league’s content up and running again.

“We wanted to keep our fans informed and engaged,” he said. “To do that, we gave producers and editors equipment for their homes, and gave them the ability to access the league’s video content remotely,” he said. “That gave us the ability to produce content for television. We also worked with players to send out messaging encouraging mask wearing and hand washing.”

Bombers in the Bubble

In addition to Steve Mayer, there were several other Ithaca College alumni who were based in bubbles in Toronto or Edmonton for the 2019-20 season.

Ivan Gottesfeld ’85
The league’s executive vice president of broadcasting, Gottesfeld played a key role in the NHL’s Return to Play plan for the 2019-20 season, creating a broadcast model that complied with all necessary quarantine and health guidelines while guaranteeing high-quality telecasts for multiple NHL media partners.

Dan O’Neill ’96
O’Neill, the league’s vice president of arena and event operations, and his technical operations team were tasked with supporting the integration of a made-for-TV event setting with video screens and production lighting that were part of the NHL’s two bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton. O’Neill also led the technological infrastructure build to support the unique needs of the teams while they resided at the hotels, and his team was also responsible for the deployment of the NHL’s CLEAR App for COVID-19 symptom checks and temperature screening.

Eric Solomon ’09
Solomon, the league’s coordinator of ticketing and credentials, managed all aspects of credentials for the Edmonton bubble and provided daily credential updates to help ensure COVID-19 testing protocols were followed. He also checked line-of-sight dasherboards before each game to ensure the correct sponsor boards were in place.

With content hitting homes again, the next, more arduous, task was at hand: helping the league’s return to play initiative be a success.

“We weren’t in a rush. We wanted to come back in the safest, healthiest way,” Mayer said. “Everything we did was based on that. We put in some very stringent protocols to ensure the safest scenario possible.”

For the NHL, that meant the creation of two “hub” cities — Edmonton and Toronto — to host its expanded 24-team playoffs. Once the cities were secured, and along with them the arenas where the games would be played and the hotels that would house coaches, players, and staff, Mayer was able to focus on his next task: making the games an event, without any fans.

Steve Mayer '84 gives a guided tour of the NHL's "bubble" in Edmonton, one of the league's two hub cities. (Video courtesy of the NHL)

“Sports are built on fan engagement,” he said. “We put on spectacles and events, and to not have the fans, that aspect is frightening.”

As a large part of his job is overseeing the league’s event department, Mayer was able to quickly come up with solutions.

“I spent a lot of time on making sure that we were giving fans at home the ultimate television experience,” he said. “We’d observed what some other professional leagues had done, and we saw what was working and what wasn’t. We didn’t want to have cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands. We wanted to put on a show.”

“We wanted to put something out there for people to respond to. The arena was the set, the ice was the stage and our players were the dancers.”

Steve Mayer

Mayer’s team brought in the brightest LED screens they could find and hired Los Angeles’ biggest lighting technician to create an in-arena atmosphere that could be appreciated in a living room thousands of miles away.

“We wanted to put something out there for people to respond to,” Mayer said. “The arena was the set, the ice was the stage and our players were the dancers.”

There were challenges, of course. The bubble the NHL created for its personnel meant that players, coaches and staff had to be quarantined for the duration of the playoffs. For Mayer and other tasked with producing the games, that meant they were going to spend nearly three months without seeing their families.

The NHL's safety protocols extended beyond just players and coaches and included all staff members and arena workers.

(Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)

“We have lots of really great, young people who just graduated from college working for us, and right before we went into the bubble, a bunch of us did a socially distanced dinner,” he recalled. “We were about to embark on this 80-day adventure, and I told them ‘I’ve been doing this since 1984, and I can tell you, you will never do anything like this again. Take it in and appreciate it.’”

Mayer’s behind the scenes work for the NHL was in sharp contrast to his focus while a student at IC. But he credits his time on South Hill with developing his versatility.

“What was great about the hands-on experience at Ithaca was that you were expected to do a little bit of everything. I was running cameras and editing footage, and I got a general knowledge that’s helped me during my career.”

Steve Mayer

“I wanted to be on the air,” he said. “I worked for both VIC and WICB, did the play-by-play for athletic contests, and hosted ‘The Gridiron Report’ for ICTV. But what was great about the hands-on experience at Ithaca was that you were expected to do a little bit of everything. I was running cameras and editing footage, and I got a general knowledge that’s helped me during my career.

“I got a job quickly after graduating, but then a television station I worked for went bankrupt, so I transitioned to producing, and went behind the camera” Mayer continued. “That would not have been possible without IC.”

On Sept. 28, when the Tampa Bay Lightning lifted the Stanley Cup and officially ended the NHL’s 2020 campaign, Mayer’s time in the bubble came to a close. In total, the league played 75 games after pausing the season.

“On a normal day, producing the Stanley Cup Finals is an accomplishment, and in these circumstances, it was an achievement,” he said. “We all knew what we were doing was something we’d never do again.”