Before FoxTrax

If there's one complaint that people who are new to hockey seem to have, it's knowing where the puck is on the ice when watching the game on TV. If you were around when the Fox network acquired NHL rights in 1996, you likely remember their "innovation" to help American viewers keep an eye on the puck while it zipped around the ice. That comet-like glow as the puck was moved and shot was known as FoxTrax, and it was introduced to the world at the 1996 NHL All-Star Game. FoxTrax was revolutionary at the time, but it wasn't the first attempt to make the puck more visible on TV. That honour belongs to another puck known as the Firepuck!

The image above was taken in Minneapolis at a Minnesota North Stars practice where the Firepuck was being tested. As you can see, the puck looks like a spot of light on the video image, and that can be seen clearer here on the actual video of that North Stars practice.
Unlike the FoxTrax pucks developed by Etak that saw pucks cut in half before having infrared transmitters, a circuit board and a battery inserted in them and epoxied back together, the Firepuck had no electronic pieces inserted in the puck. Rather, it used coloured retro reflective materials of either embedded lens elements or prismatic reflectors laminated into recesses on the flat surfaces and the vertical edge of a standard hockey puck with yellow being the preferred reflected colour. A spotlight was positioned on the TV camera and focused at the centre of the viewing area which caused the puck to glow for the cameras tracking it. Pretty cool, right?

Well, I was hooked on this new glowing puck, and I found an article reprinted in The Medicine Hat News on October 13, 1994 that was originally published in the Toronto Star and written by Tim Harper!

In the article, Harper notes that the Firepuck was an idea that was formed by Don Klassen of Lake Elmo, Minnesota 19 years before it debuted in 1994 as he watched his son's mites game. Working on it for the previous 18 months, it made its Canadian TV debut on the October 12, 1994 TSN broadcast of the IHL game between the Atlanta Knights and the Minnesota Moose, but it made its TV debut back on January 26, 1994 at the IHL All-Star Game in Fort Wayne, Indiana!

In fact, the 1994 IHL All-Star Game saw the puck used for the second period of the contest, and here's some video evidence of the Firepuck being introduced to TV audiences before being used on the ice!

I chuckled every time the announcers reminded everyone that "it is an experiment" with the Firepuck's system, but it clearly didn't work as intended with where the cameras were located based on how little the "glow" was seen as the spotlight likely wouldn't pick up the reflective material well on those wide-angle shots. Nevertheless, the puck did make its worldwide debut in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the IHL was the first league to get into this new puck-nological advance!

Harper's article above also notes that it was also used in a game at Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland, and it made its third appearance in that Knights-Moose game. It's fourth and final appearance came on January 17, 1997 when the ECHL adopted it for their All-Star Game in Charlotte, North Carolina, marking the last time that the Firepuck would appear in any professional hockey game. The reasons for leagues to stop using it included its tendency for the puck to bounce, the spotlights reflecting off the ice, and its difficulty in being picked up on wide shots as mentioned above. Despite the initial excitement over its use with the Minnesota experiment, the Firepuck was ultimately done in by what it tried to solve: tracking the puck with the spotlight!

Full marks to Don Klassen for the effort he gave in trying to solve a problem, but it seems that the technology in the mid-1990s needed to make this Firepuck idea work simply wasn't a reality. After the FoxTrax puck debuted, NHL fans were cold to the effects that Fox used to make the puck glow, and the ideas for glowing pucks to help fans track the puck on the ice pretty much died.

I'm not sure that we'll ever see a glowing puck in any form again, but hockey's history should note that the two pucks that glowed lasted only for a couple of years before being mothballed. With high-definition television, seeing the puck on the ice has been easier than ever, so glowing pucks seem destined to remain in the archives.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!