Page 7 of Hard to Get

My gaze lands on the next player to have his device secured to his jersey. Holy shit. It’s the guy from the park the other night.

He lifts his chin at that moment and looks directly at me, his eyes sparking with recognition. His expression is cute confusion. Probably mine is, too.

I was talking to one of the Orca players. Who knew?

Instead of hitting the ice, he takes a few steps toward me. “Hey.” He smiles. “What are you doing here?”

I feel Chris glance at me.

“Hi. I’m the owner of Vantix,” I tell the hockey player, naming my company. “Well, one of the owners. I’m Stella Brooks. We developed this new technology you’re launching tonight.”

His expression still looks puzzled. “Oh. Wow. I had no idea.”

“I didn’t know you play for the Orcas.” I turn to Chris. “We both walk our dogs in the same park. We chatted the other night.” And he asked me out for coffee. And I’ve been kicking myself for turning him down ever since.

“Ah.” Chris nods. “Good luck out there. We’re all hoping for a smooth kickoff.”

“Wrong sports metaphor,” I joke to Chris and he laughs. “Yes, good luck. In the game, too.”

“Thanks.” With a nod, the player turns and I see the name across the back of his jersey: Wood. Number 94.

Jayden Wood. Defenceman.

I’m feeling a little taken aback myself.

We move on to a short media scrum. This isn’t as interesting to the local sports media as the game itself, the first pre-season game with the final roster for the upcoming season still to be determined, but there are a few reporters interested in the technology details.

“During games, the system sends out radio pings to the puck and to the player devices, which reply by emitting pulses of infrared light,” I explain how it works. “The infrared cameras,” I point to the rafters, “can triangulate those signals, locating the players and puck in three-dimensional space and transmitting that data nearly in real-time.”

Chris is with me and he nods. “Our hope is to expand broadcasters’ capabilities during games and hopefully enhance fan engagement with a better experience listening or watching. Paul, you can probably speak more to that.” He gestures to Paul Milan, a producer from ASN (All Sports Network) who’s also been working with us.

Paul speaks more about how broadcasters will benefit. “Tracking player behaviour will help automate replays,” he tells the group. “For example, we’ll know when the puck comes into the zone, we’ll know the moment the goal is scored, and we can automatically clip off a segment of video.”

“Our platform, Numora, has an AI engine that can do things faster than we can,” I continue. “We feed the data into it and it can have all kinds of metrics in seconds. Basic things like player and shot speeds, but also categorizing passes, dump ins, breakaways… even who has possession of the puck. It’s amazing!” I get excited talking about this and receive smiles from the reporters. “It’ll also help team analysts with new data and help coaching staff monitor in-game workloads of individual players. And more ideas that we’ve brainstormed with teams and the league that we’re working on for the future.”

This is our biggest project ever and I can’t believe it’s finally coming to fruition. If everything goes well tonight, we’ll be celebrating later with champagne.

“Congratulations!” Troy lifts his glass to mine and we tap them together with a satisfying ping.

“Here’s to us!” I take a sip of Veuve Clicquot. “Delicious. Tastes like… winning.”

He laughs. We’re joined by Chris and Paul, who I was with earlier, followed by two of the owners of the Orcas, Chen Zhou and Clark Montgomery. We’re at Ellington, a swanky cocktail bar near the arena, and yes, we’re celebrating.

The vibe in here is industrial chic, dark, with warm wood tones and a massive concrete bar under the glow of glass and gold mood lighting. It’s cool. Expensive. Sophisticated.

The game itself wasn’t much to celebrate. The team they iced tonight was half veterans and half prospects and their opponent was the same, so it wasn’t a lot of high skill, but the Orcas did win, so at least there’s that. The Orcas record the last few seasons has been so bad, it’s become a running joke in Vancouver. Possibly the whole league. But this isn’t the time to dwell on that.

“This is a pretty exciting moment,” Clark says to us. “This is the future.”

“Yes! I agree. Soon, we’ll be analyzing how well Ovechkin and Kucherov draw defenders away from their teammates. Or the ideal spacing on a 1-3-1 power play.”

Clark gives me an amused glance. “You’re pretty smart for a woman.”

I roll my eyes, trying not to smile. “Yeah, yeah.”

We had a few tense moments early in this project when he was skeptical of my hockey knowledge. Now he knows better. Honestly, I’m the one who should be questioning his decisions, with the management and coaching staff he’s hired who have dropped the ball. Oops. Wrong sports metaphor again.

At least the team has a new coach this year, so there’s hope.