from Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe,

There’s a new kid in NHL rinks, and this is fitted with a tiny embedded battery, a circuit board roughly the size of a half-dollar, and 6-inch-long tubes that emit infrared light at 60 pulses per second — fast, yet still two beats behind Connor McDavid on a breakaway...

The space-age pucks, which cost the NHL some $40 each to produce, will make their debut next week in the NHL’s 31 arenas, all part of the league unveiling its long-anticipated Puck and Player Tracking technology for use in broadcasts and, undoubtedly, the tidal wave of legalized betting about to wash over all pro sports.

But let’s save all the data and their various uses for a different day and focus on the puck’s grand makeover. It’s come a long, long way from days of old. Some of the late-19th-century versions were made of wood. The rubber iteration came along around 1900 when someone shaved off two sides of a ball, a puck emerging from the handiwork.

Rest assured, the new puck will look and sound the same as the old model — 6 ounces, 3 inches wide, 1 inch thick. Based on exhaustive testing, noted Lehanski, players have reported it feels the same on their sticks, fires just like the old version, and bangs off pipes and boards with honest-to-Boom Boom Geoffrion auditory authenticity.

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