from Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press,

Brace yourselves for change, folks. Hockey as you know it is about to undergo an extreme makeover.

It's not really visible to the naked eye, but a tiny bump on the shoulder pads of every player competing in the Stanley Cup final in Edmonton is a sign of what's to come. Members of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Dallas Stars are being used as guinea pigs for NHL puck and player tracking technology, which is expected to become the new normal by the 2020-21 season.

Ever wondered just how fast Nikolaj Ehlers was skating when he made that unreal zone entry? The velocity of Patrik Laine's one-timer on the power play? How many miles of ice Mark Scheifele covered in a game? The probability of Connor Hellebuyck making the circus-like save? How effective, or not, the Winnipeg Jets defencemen are at closing the gap on opposing forwards.?

All of that information, and much, much more, will soon be available for public consumption.

The long-anticipated technology is being used in the playoffs.

"With this tracking data, now you can say a player could intercept that pass or couldn't intercept that pass, now you can say who was in the lane, who was supposed to be in the lane, who's out of position, what kind of gap control there was, how close is the closest defender to putting on pressure.

continued