Torture-testing tech with the Las Vegas Golden Knights

[BLANK_AUDIO] Hey, welcome back to the CNET stage live from CES 2020, my name is Jeff Bakalar. Here with me now is Shane 90 former NHLer and now, an honor analyst for the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Thanks for being here, Shane. Thanks for having me. This has been a lot of fun hanging out on Monday. We had a lot of fun, yeah. We did, every year we come to Las Vegas And we get around to torture testing gadgets that claim to be super rugged. But ever since Vegas got an NHL team, I've been trying to find a way to weasel my way into playing hockey in Las Vegas, because I love hockey and that's what I want to do out here. So Shane, first of all, thank you to you, the team, the management for having us out there. And helping us break some stuff on your practice ice. Well it was unusual when the request came that it's not often you're going to take electronics onto a hockey arena and and test them out by shooting at them with pox then using them as pucks. unconventional But as soon as I heard that was what was required, I said, absolutely, this sounds like a lot of fun and it was. So what we did was, we set up a test with a variety of different devices like you said. Action cams, MC Rugged cases, a few phones and we basically just started unloading on them. And before we roll that video, Shane, you are defenseman in the NHL. I'm sure you blocked your share of shots in your career. You were wearing equipment. I'm sure it's still hurt, but can you describe for everyone just. What kind of impact these devices were facing? Well, if you get we did it a couple different ways. So basically a hockey shot a slap shot, it averages anywhere 85 to 90 miles per hour. The hardest ever recorded was 108.8 right by Zeno Chara in hockey's a six ounce Vulcanized rubber pockets pre frozen so they travel at speeds similar to baseball but there's 20% more kinetic energy to a to a hockey puck traveling at the same speed and it causes extremely more damage. Yeah you want to get hit by baseball. I've broken bones through that equipment from blocking shots. I've almost lost my eye twice from a hockey puck. This was previously. It's all good now. Yeah. Other than my eye looks two different colors, but it's just a little pupil damage. And you can see fine. Everything's cool. Yeah, I can see good. Everything's cool. But a hockey puck is dangerous. Not only that, it's just a contact sport. The boards, the glass, there's a little forgiveness to it, but guys tear shoulders, break bones from contact, so We put these, devices through what a lot of guys get injured from. Yeah totally. Got me thinking especially when we started shooting on net, we were hitting all these things and reminded me of the cameras that are in the goals. Yeah. During your career, did you ever see anything get busted because all that stuff, they don't want it to get hit. It's in the net. But they do not want that camera to face a slam shot or something like that. Yeah at times you see knocked down it's well protected it. You know I've been out of the game playing for this nine years now. And we are at CES, technology has drastically changed in the National Hockey League throughout four cameras, the angles, everything that's involved and I think they're a lot better protective. They're able to cover so much of the ice now. Right. And I'm sure we can get in later. I know the NHL's about to really advance the technology in the game to follow puck and player tracking. They started last year. I think they did the All Star game. They did a game here in Vegas. They're still getting all the data from that. And hopefully that'll come soon because Hockey's a unique sport to try and track because it's so fast. And everything happens, there's no time where they're, players change during play. Yeah. There's no whistle where you- You need robots to track what's going on. It's hard to track. So, I'm excited, it'll help me in the broadcast. A broadcaster, it'll really help us give it viewers Give it to people interested in the game, a lot more data and a lot more interesting facts, well, during game time. All right, let's check out- Yeah! What we did on Monday. Let's roll that video and we'll get you after this video real quick. Man, this is amazing. For 13 years, I've been coming to CES. We always torture test stuff out here. I get never that call to do that. And now, now Vegas has a hockey team. So now I get the call. Now I get to torture test something. Finally, it's my turn to do something poorly but maybe well, let's go [MUSIC] I picked the right job I did. So what we're doing is not very scientific. We're going to shoot frozen rubber gadgets. And they're probably gonna break. So it's not really an indication of how rugged something is, but more just us finding a fun way to break stuff. [MUSIC] I'm here with Shane Hnidy. He's the color analyst for the Vegas Golden Knights. Professional career that expand well more than a decade Stanley Cup winner. This is gonna be fun. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna shoot some frozen rubber at couple of gadgets. I don't like the gadgets I don't like their chances. No. But that said, I haven't shot in a long time. I haven't been on the ice for a while. Not quite what I used to be able to do. I'm expecting you to have that pinpoint accuracy. Wow, you're a former NHLer, I play in a beer league. What we have here is a basically six-foot But why a piece of Plexiglas. With some velcro and we're about to attach all these. To the Velcro it's sort of sadistic in a way is a hero black 8 by GoPro. That's the Sony action cam. Then we have a AUSMIN action cam. [MUSIC] Here is an iPhone with a rugged case. [LAUGH] Which is just sort of like a death sentence, bud. A rugged case? Yeah, [LAUGH] Here we go, there's a Lacie drive. We'll see how you go, bud. Okay, this is the thermal cat phone. It's got a thermal camera on it. Check it out, frosty and morning Jeff, is at the same time 3, 2, 1 go. [SOUND] Okay. That was a good test, didn't fall down. [SOUND] [LAUGH] So that didn't work so well. All the gadgets fell off and that velcro is a little too weak for the strength of a Shane 90 wrist shot. So what we're gonna do is, hockey Magyver over here is gonna Hang these from the crossbar which is brilliant. We should have thought of that earlier. [MUSIC] Round two or three, whatever this is, now we have to shoot a little higher. That could be good or bad, let's see. [MUSIC] [LAUGH] Ooh. Did I hit the tape, little. Got one, there we go. [MUSIC] [LAUGH] There we go! My God. And they're all down! All right, now, Shane and I are gonna play a little bit of crossfire. Just try and get this guy that's off The crossbar, because why not? Why not? Why not? We got them here, let's do it. All right, this is what, GoPro? I'm sorry. [SOUND] All right, this is the [UNKNOWN]. [BLANK_AUDIO] [LAUGH] This is the a Sony [UNKNOWN] [MUSIC] All of closed. And screen [UNKNOWN] you know. There we go. [UNKNOWN] [MUSIC] [LAUGH] That didn't hit the club [UNKNOWN] That was pretty good. You got some loft. [NOISE] [BLANK_AUDIO] Whoa. [SOUND]. I'm telling you that thing is fine. Kenny the eye for him, I feel bad for it. [NOISE] [SOUND] Whoa. Is it still alive? It's still alive, man. That is impressive. It was on when I shot it. [SOUND] That looked okay. This is the heaviest product. Yeah, this thing is a brick. We've got the cat thermal phones, it's real heavy, so that means it's gonna hit hard, too. Lets see, crossbar One, nothing. It's high up. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, that tough to shoot. It's tough to shoot. Good shot. Ooh! Did that hit the thing? [MUSIC] All right, we're gonna take these back to the stage and see if any of them can turn on. My money is on that lease you drive in. I think the drive has real good chance, this went through a test of Normally you wouldn't see. Yeah, I feel like they don't do this in the factory. No, no, no, I've played hockey a long time and I've never had gadgets to shoot with. Yeah, so this, again, is crazy what we just did, but [LAUGH] let's take it back to the stage and see how it turns out. Let's just get this out of the way first. Yeah. These are my gloves and I wear them wherever I go. No. This was a ridiculous test that we did right? Yeah. In no way should we expect any of these gadgets to survive what we did to them. No, but you know what, some real good results when you look at Totally. It happened. Totally. So, but- Yeah, we'll get to it. And, again, thank you to all the- Yes. Gadget manufactures to sacrificing these products for us. That was very brave. So, I'm wearing gloves because we did shatter some glass. I just wanna come in and show some of the remains of what we're dealing with. This is the Sony Action Cam. That one got the worst. That's the one where I hit the actual iron. On the net, look at that. Square. Boy, this really had no chance. The lens inside, though, is still intact. That's points [CROSSTALK], that's pretty good. That's some points. This was the Cat phone, that thermal imaging phone. I don't know what happened here. The battery might have busted a little bit. It popped open the back case. But this thing was taken a beating we could not break it, A few times. That was that was pretty impressive. All the stuff initially like falling to the ice was fine it was until we actually right here was the rugged iPhone case this thing is this you could put this on another iPhone it would still work right now. The case, The case [UNKNOWN] phone not so much. [LAUGH] Yeah, look at that. You could see it is busted right open. Sorry, little buddy. Okay, what else do we have here? This was the GoPro. Yeah. No, this was the, what was this? No, the DJI, yeah, yeah, yeah, shattered glass. Look, what do you expect, right? The front's good. The front's good, front's great. I'm gonna take this and put it on a different one. This is salvageable. Right here. Everything else not so much. Again, trying to be delicate here. All this broken glasses. This one here. It is here we go. This was the most impressive one, right? Yeah. Apart from the hard drive here. It took a bit of a direct hit from all kind of a glancing Puck shot. Yeah I don't know if I could see that. It's tough to zoom in. But here's where Shane nailed it. Yeah. Not bad, dude. Pretty good, and then it went off the glass, the plexiglass, and down on the ice. It took a beating. You know what? That glass is good. Yeah, the glass is still intact. Maybe you make action cameras out of hockey pucks. Maybe that's the move. That's for a lot smarter people than me to decide. That's a patent that you and I just got right there, 2020 patent. All right, finally, the LaCie drive, the LaCie drive, however you pronounce it. No screen on it. No screen, nothing to shatter. You or I did not hit the aluminium metal here. But I got it, I didn't notice that. That might be new. But I think I hit it somewhere on the side. Yeah. What we're gonna do right now real quick Just gonna plug it in and see if it works. I think that's fair. Yeah, let's check it out. I mean, we don't know, so here we go. Hold your breath. All right, let's see. Dude, the power light's on. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] The power's on. Nothing's popping up. I don't know. Power lights are good. [CROSSTALK] The power lights on so something is working, if not just that little LED that shining that went off the boards two or three time we just started playing with it while we're just like passing around. Yeah. So it's not registering but at least the light went on. That's impressive. That's something. That's impressive. I'm going to unplug it because I don't want it to explode or something like that, but Very, very cool. Going back to what you're talking about with the the tech in hockey. I think for me watching the game and understanding like, just how fast it is, how hard is how do you think all that stuff will help people who maybe aren't exposed to hockey understand that a little bit better?>> You want to bring as many people as you can into the sport and you try to do that any way you can So to recognise you want to see how fast players can skate? Yeah, Get up to 20 miles per hour you want to see you know how hard their shots are in game. Some of the you know how many how, how much does a player skate in the game like an average shift is around 40 to 45 seconds. You know, the Ice time of a player can range between 12 to 25 minutes in a game. I think the tracking they did I believe last year one of the games between Vegas and San Jose two players skated three miles like stuff play some interesting facts in game and then accuracy on passing. So I don't know exactly the exact technology that goes into it. It's pretty fascinating to me when they can be able to track it. And as I said, it's harder because players in hockey change on the fly. There's no whistle. It can be mid-game and you've got three guys changing and then another two, five guys on it, So it's hard to do it but there's so many dynamics and then it'll help the analytics of the game totally. It's very interesting and I think for for people, the more information you can give and the more people you can bring into the sport, however it is whether they love physicality hockey, whether they love the skill, whether they love the finance, whether they love The data the tech, I think it's great and it's a enhances the viewers perspective. I've been watching hockey for 30 years, I'm very attached emotionally to this sport. You look at like what the other sports have in terms of their, stats kind of Renaissance From Moneyball to all the way through, you know, how granular that analytics gets, I think hockey still has a little way to go in terms of like unpacking that not because there's just because it is such a fast game and such a tough game to kind of wrap your hands around. You need that technology to help a that kind of animal. Yeah, it is. Alright, you know, the technology will help. It'll help the analytics, analytics but it's still a sport where it's a read and react sport. Everything happens in a split second decision making. But it's the evolution throughout any sport where you're seeing different tech products come in now there there's products that tech their test their mind for players I saw, they're starting to introduce that. Through USA hockey, there's something that allows them because hockey IQ is a big part of it, how you'd react in certain situations and mimic. When I was training, there was none of this right? You know, we're going back a few years or decades, whatever you want to call it. So it's interesting to follow what's going on and how things are changing then How it's gonna come into the game at the highest level, pro level in the National Hockey League. So you said you've been out of the league a few years. Since that time till now, is there any one thing that kind of move the needle a little further and away that you kind of wish like I wish I was around for that innovation or. Money. [LAUGH] Salaries have gone up quite a bit. Salary caps up. It's there one thing that, You know what I'm happy where I was able I think just the skill of the players now is off their speed and skill of the game. It is so fast and that's tech to light and that is the the components of a state. I think the thing you see now is just the camera angles, the ability to watch the game. I you know, although I do TV I still believe hockey's I'm biased, but I believe that it's the best live sport. I'm a big- Because it is, yeah. I'm a big NFL fan. Baseball I could take either way, but NFL, to me, is a television sport because it's not as fast paced, it's slow moving. Hockey, it's just fast. So, the abilty, I think anything we can get to help us to deliver that game because we're still trying. You're trying to grow the game as much as you can. And I think we're in a world now where tech can really help you do that. Definitely, like you, I am a fan, and I wanna see that new level of being able to watch the game and understand things that you can't see with your eyes, that you need technology to track for you, whether it be. I'm sure we'll get to the point where they'll be measuring the flex on sticks and stuff. Well there is. Yeah, there already is, you have Their evolution of the hockey stick is drastically from wooden to they did aluminum to piece where you had a wood blade aluminum shaft and then it went to a one piece to accomplish that now most sticks are made out of carbon fiber with elegant there's components of caviar to make it stronger. There's different kick points, different flex the band of the stick, which You know that brings the speed of the park so guys shoot harder now you quicker and and all that you'll be able to be interesting to to be able to grab that in game right a guy lets a shot go how hard was that coming how fast was he's get. [UNKNOWN] when it happened, the accuracy of a player, he's executed four to five passes and how long and goaltenders their saves what they're fit. They're standing there facing right, 90 miles per hour, frozen rubber coming out. That's awesome. It's a fun time to be a fan of the sport. Let's try the the drive one more time, you get in the control room they want to see one more time. Let's see Alright, we got that light again. If this breaks my computer you're paying for a new one. Not mine. I don't Yeah. Not gonna happen I don't think. Well now I can't even get the light to come on. All right. It's mad at me. Shane, it was such a thrill can escape. So much fun Again thank you and thank the Golden Nights for letting us convince my bosses that I should bring my ice kits to Las Vegas. Yeah. That's gonna do for us, the Golden Nights are back in action tomorrow night hosting the Kings. If you're in town in Las Vegas and you've never been T-Mobile arena for a game, take it from me go do it. It is a wild time. And thanks again to all the product makers for sending us the products to torture. That's GoPro cat, Sony Zizo, we really appreciate all of that.