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Hockey Goes GoPro



A day or two ago, a video started making the rounds of Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby doing some cool stuff on the ice. Nothing new, right? What made this clip special was the angle we got on Crosby’s skills: his.

Crosby had a GoPro camera strapped to his helmet. First, one was attached to the top and angled down, near the visor, that let’s us see what he sees on the ice. Then, the angle of the camera was adjusted, giving viewers an up-close-and-personal vantage point.

The resulting footage is pretty great:




The Crosby video is the highest profile clip to come out of GoPro’s partnership with the NHL. Announced back in January, the deal between the camera company and hockey league will bring action-cam footage from real-time game situations into live broadcasts. At least, that’s the plan. Special cameras with light, tiny wireless transmitters were tested out during the All-Star Game skills competition.

GoPro cut a compilation video to show off the results. And they’re impressive:




Bringing an action cam into the NHL is a no brainer. Hockey is fast, dynamic, and — as far as pro sports go — extreme. In other words, the perfect environment for a GoPro. Where this might run into trouble, though, is how traditional the hockey world can be. “The NHL and NHLPA have the technology and are free to use it as little or as much as they want,” a GoPro official told the website Gizmodo

The kind of in-your-face view of the game that these cameras can bring to fans has the potential to sell hockey like never before. But if big-time stars reject it, or teams say “Thanks, but no thanks,” things could go south. So seeing someone like Crosby taking the tech out for a spin is a good sign we’ll be getting awesome in-game footage down the road.

Here’s one last video, featuring a bunch of other NHL stars trying out GoPro cameras:

sidney crosby gopro