News & Trends

Quince Imaging and Vegas Golden Knights Release the Kraken

When the NHL's Vegas Golden Knights hosted the newly introduced Seattle Kraken, the only way to welcome them to the league was the Vegas way, which included a mixture of bright lights, theatrics, and projection mapping. 

The Vegas Golden Knights wanted to craft an unforgettable experience on opening night for hockey fans, and they knew exactly who to call. Insert Eric Gazzillo, vice president of Quince Imaging, a company that has pioneered projection mapping for sports like major league baseball, the NBA, and NHL.

Quince Imaging was tasked with creating a pregame show that would push the limits of AV technology and create an everlasting experience. In this "How'd They Do That?" video, which is part of the video series that highlights international audiovisual experiences, AVIXA got a look at the work that went into releasing the Kraken on game night. 

The NHL has seen its fair share of AV innovations throughout the years. So, Quince Imaging knew they had their work cut out for them. 

“We were the 31st team in the league,” said VP and Executive Producer of the Vegas Golden Knights, Andrew Abrams. “The 32nd team that was announced that year was the Kraken and it just so happened the first home game, our first home game, was against the Kraken so we knew that we had an obligation to our fans, to ourselves, to you know blow the roof off the place.”

The design team at Quince Imaging came up with an entire theatrical approach. An image of a Kraken door knocker was their main reference as the storyboarding process kicked into gear. But a monster of a problem stood in their path. 

“The arenas themselves are pretty complex environments,” said Gazzillo. “You have people working literally 24/7 to put down the court [and] resurface the ice. Trying to find time in these arena schedules to say ‘hey can we rehearse, can we see the alignment of this tentacle?’ That's really not an option a lot of the times.”

Since they couldn’t test out the projections in the actual rink, they had to get creative, as shown in the video. 
Eventually, the clock struck, and it was finally time to take this show to the ice rink. 

“People freaked out, it did over 500,000 views on our social media channels alone,” said Abrams. “It did over 1 million impressions and that's just the Golden Knights social media channel. It blew up online and it was one of the coolest things in my career I've ever got to be a part of, and I hope and I think it was one of the coolest things that people got to witness.”

See all the magic for yourself in the video below! And if you know of any AV experiences that should be featured, email us at [email protected].