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Is the NHL Bringing Back Fox’s Glowing Puck?

By Catherine Silverman

Oct 9, 2014; Washington, DC, USA; A general view of the NHL Face-Off 2014 logo on the ice prior to the game between the Washington Capitals and the Montreal Canadiens at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 9, 2014; Washington, DC, USA; A general view of the NHL Face-Off 2014 logo on the ice prior to the game between the Washington Capitals and the Montreal Canadiens at Verizon Center. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports /
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Is the NHL looking to bring back the FoxTrax Glowing Puck from the 1996 All-Star Game? 

Back in 1996, Fox Sports got laughed off the stage with the introduction of ‘FoxTrax’, the glowing puck that flew around the ice during that year’s NHL All-Star Game.

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Created by adding infrared sensors to a now glowing hockey puck, the idea was to make puck tracking easier for spectators watching on TV. The puck would pulse a neon blue while being passed around the ice, turning bright red whenever it moved faster than 70 miles per hour.

Think this is a joke? Many of the viewers who witnessed it most certainly did- the concept was laughed away, along with the credibility of the ‘greatest technological breakthrough in sports fox has ever seen’. The concept was dismissed as just another failed marketing ploy, and was long-forgotten by fans old and young.

In a recent tweet by NHL blogger Ian Thomas, though, the idea of the puck being brought back was mentioned:

The technology was laughed at at the time, but the glowing puck was actually a precursor for modern-day sports tracking seen on TV. Know that yellow line you see for first down tracking in football games? How about baseball tracking during MLB games? These are all the modern consequences of the original glowing puck.

Bringing the puck back could make some people extremely upset. For example, Yahoo’s Puck Daddy Editor Greg Wyshynski was not amused by the ‘innovation’:

"“Imagine if you were watching the Super Bowl and every time the running back disappeared in a pile of tacklers he started glowing like a blueberry from Chernobyl.”"

Those who are advocates of bringing back the glowing puck, though, aren’t necessarily looking to deal with the Chernobyl blueberry again- just a more subtle way of puck-tracking, especially on replays. They could even use it to simply shade the area around the puck slightly darker, particularly with new advancements in technology.

Of course, for those who haven’t seen it, we can all still get a good laugh out of the old glowing puck.

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