The National Hockey League drops the puck on its second season tonight with a trio of divisional rivalry games, and VITAC once again is lacing up the skates to provide captions in the quest for the Stanley Cup.
Opening round playoff action begins on NBC stations with the Philadelphia Flyers visiting the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins (7 PM EST on NBCSN), followed by the Los Angeles Kings taking on the Vegas Golden Knights (10 PM EST on NBCSN). CNBC will carry the Minnesota Wild and Winnipeg Jets matchup (7 PM EST).
Five additional Game 1 contests featuring Boston, Toronto, Columbus, Washington, New Jersey, Tampa Bay, Colorado, Nashville, San Jose, and Anaheim will take the ice tomorrow (Thursday).
And there are no “healthy scratches” when it comes to VITAC’s making the games accessible for all fans. Our realtime captioners are prepped for the postseason, having researched team rosters and stats and added names and spellings into their dictionaries; our sports supervisors and realtime coordinators test network and web connections with captioners before each faceoff; and our realtime schedulers assign captioners for each game.
The NHL playoffs continues VITAC’s impressive run of providing captions for this year’s biggest sporting events, including the NHL Winter Classic in January, the Super Bowl and Winter Olympic Games in February, and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and Paralympic Winter Games in March.
In order to handle such a full slate of NHL postseason games, NBC Sports Group will present matchups on NBC, NBCSN, and NHL Network, as well as NBCUniversal’s USA Network, CNBC, and the Golf Channel. NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app will live stream all games airing on NBC, NBCSN, USA Network, CNBC, and the Golf Channel.
So whether you’re pulling for a Penguins’ three-peat, the Jets or Maple Leafs bringing a championship back to Canada, or the Golden Knights expansion team taking home Lord Stanley’s Cup, VITAC has you covered.