Game for Fan Entertainment

As fans roared approval when Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour scored his first of two third-period goals Tuesday night at Climate Pledge Arena, Caitlin Salemi was already looking to inspire more ear-drenching high decibels for which Seattle sports fans are famous. After all, the Kraken were suddenly down just two goals, 3-1, with 11 minutes left in regulation.

Salemi can be found on her headset every Kraken home game hunkered down in a corner seat of the game-entertainment booth on the arena’s press bridge. Top lieutenant Nicole Shabaz and public address announcer Chet Buchanan were positioned to her right. Salemi and her crew are undoubtedly a major reason why Kraken faithful and newbie fans alike not only have a blast at home games but how and why fans’ vocal support can rev up the likes of Montour and teammates.

Make no mistake, from captain Jordan Eberle right on through the roster, Seattle players are inspired and grateful for the deafening crowd noise that has fueled comebacks like Tuesday’s against Montreal plus duly impressed former playoff standouts now teammates such as free agent signees Montour, Chandler Stephenson and Mason Marchment (who heard it in a visitors Dallas uniform during the second round of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs).

As Tuesday’s game clock ticked down to six minutes remaining, Salemi had an urgent, calmly voiced question: “Is the decibel meter working?” She was thinking about her options to generate crowd noise organically.

“We do have tried-and-true noise meters and crowd pumps I know will always work,” said Salemi in a Wednesday conversation after the Kraken’s overtime loss that nonetheless rescued a standings point. “But we want to keep things fresh from game to game. I am mindful of not utilizing the same noise meters over and over. For each one, some fit the moment more than others. It’s on me knowing what the moment calls for.”

Salemi pauses, turning her laptop to show a digital “punch list of literally all of our available noise prompts from noise meters to team pumps, to movie clips, to our blowfish.” The prompts are loaded into the arena entertainment system, which flows into the mega-popular twin video boards and 28,000 square feet of LED signage inside the bowl and concourses.

“This [punch list] is kind of my best friend on a game night,” said Salemi, smiling slightly. “It sits right next to my script. I bounce back and forth between the two to figure out, ‘OK, do we need this in this moment? Do we need a clappy fun one just to get the crowd going? Or do we need fans to scream and make some noise?’ There are a lot of times I’ll turn to ‘Shabz’, saying, ‘What do you think fits here?’ Or, say, ‘Hey, EV [Eric Vaughn, Kraken director of live production and broadcast], what do you think works?’”

Master Control Room: Windowless But Plenty of Screens

The aforementioned Vaughn sits in the arena’s master control room on a restricted-access level some five stories below where Salemi is stationed. Vaughn, like Salemi, is a Kraken employee who joined the team in the months before the puck dropped on the inaugural season. He sits alongside Alex Gross, Kraken manager of live production, who calls for the mountains of game-night content appearing on the twin boards and sweeping LED displays inside the arena. Gross has 20-something camera views from which he can select the next shots on the twin boards, including three “robo-cams” or wireless cameras manned by three operators roaming for crowd shots and relevant players entering the rink from the locker room tunnel.

“My favorite part of the job is our purpose each game revolves around, making sure people are entertained, making sure people leave with a smile,” said Gross. “Maybe you’ve had a tough day but then we put a kid on the video boards who smiles for the first time and gets excited, it's hard not to just let go of whatever the day has thrown at you ... Same goes for younger people, older folks, middle-aged, everyone we show on the video boards.”

Gross’ game days start early, long before the 1:30 p.m. all-hands meeting to discuss the night’s run of show, and sometimes sooner than the calendar date. To say few people fully understand (save Salemi and Shabaz and Vaughn) how many details need to be addressed and organized is, well, a “Gross” understatement.

“My biggest priority is the LED displays in the building,” said Gross. “That's the first thing I work on and normally the last thing I work on too. Part of it is just the amount of displays we have: 28,000 square feet of LED in and around the arena. Inside the bowl, there are three ribbons [circling} on three levels, including the two main displays and three levels of ribbons. In the Alaska Airlines atrium, we’ve got the columns, escalator walls, the Modelo bar. We can do some of the back end ahead of time, depending on how busy the arena is, but always have fixing and testing to do on game days.”

On top of that, Gross calls all camera shots appearing on the video boards along with pre-made graphics Salemi calls for during game action or to emphasize special themes (Tuesday was Hispanic Heritage night, which required a specialized set of branding graphics).

“It is no small feat in itself, just getting all the content in all the different computers onto the twin boards and LED [locations],” said Vaughn, who assembled the master control room with a top-notch freelancer staff from years of working Seattle Mariners and other local sports production rooms and trucks. “Everything you see on the ribbon and boards gets made by our ‘MoGraph’ [motion graphics] team or editing team. They deliver it here, then we download it, distribute it to all the appropriate playback devices ... Alex handles the content loading and organizing. It’s a ton.”

Bringing the ‘Game Presentation’ Full Circle

Vaughn is valued across the operation for his good-natured professional demeanor and deep experience at delivering whatever content needs pulling and loading on the twin boards, sometimes turning around the request in mere seconds. More than once Tuesday, he calmly found the piece of content and/or answer Salemi needed as the game transformed into the plus-column for the Kraken.

Perhaps most effective is Vaughn’s success at serving as the unified voice for Salemi and Shabaz from the master control room. Gross works on his own channel to connect with camera operators while Vaughn has one ear with the master control crew and one with Salemi as she spins her nightly masterpieces.

“Most teams don’t have a position like mine,” said Vaughn. “It’s common in broadcast trucks to have a director and a producer working together, but less so in game presentation. While Alex is calling cameras and focusing on the hockey [and fan reactions], I'm looking to organize replays and graphics and any fun stuff, maybe find a certain celebrity in a suite working with a robo-op [wireless camera operator] ... Caitlin is three or four steps ahead of me and I'm one or two of steps ahead of Alex so he puts up the content [on the boards] at just the right moment each time.”

Amplifying the Kraken Rally ‘Time’

On this night, during a late-game timeout, Salemi chooses a video montage of famed TV/movie sports coaches from the likes of “Friday Night Lights,” “Any Given Sunday” and, naturally, Team USA coach Herb Brooks (played by actor Kurt Russell) with the finale sound bite, “This is our time!” The crowd instantly goes high decibels.

Soon after, Montour is chasing a puck deep in the Montreal zone and passing to Shane Wright in the high slot. Wright one-times a shot for a goal that cuts the lead to 3-2 at 15:17 of the third period. Fans are full throttle, seconds later spontaneously chanting, “Let’s go Kraken!” as Salemi and the control room show crowd shots and replays of the goal.

During a stoppage with 2:38 remaining, Salemi is the first headset voice to note the Kraken net is empty. She clearly knows the sport, the first to call penalties and icing all game. She tells the channel, “Be ready with the energy meter please” if there is a [Kraken] offensive zone faceoff break. Montour, with assists from Vince Dunn and Jaden Schwartz plus Jordan Eberle screening net front, scores the regulation equalizer before the energy meter is tapped. Pure decibels of joy ensue.

Where It Starts is Where We End

The game-night entertainment show has officially won awards from relevant professional organizations, but most of all has fans talking to other fans, friends, hockey newbies, you name it. It’s proper to give props and a virtual standing ovation for all participants in both the 1:30 p.m. gameday run-of-show meeting held by Salemi and the 4 p.m. camera position meeting led by Gross, who always asks for any “good news” (Tuesday included one robo-cam operator happily reporting “the raccoons have returned” to his yard).

But there is only one place we can finish. That is with the passion for hockey Salemi first gushed as a young girl and now pours into Kraken home nights with a calm, witty, urgent and grateful game-entertainment call. The launch point came from attending one of many ECHL games with her parents while growing up in Hampton Roads, VA.

“I grew up in a hockey household,” said Salemi. “When I was eight, we were at a game. I turned to my dad, asking, ‘Why can't girls play?’ He was like, ‘They can.’ So I started playing [on boys' teams with the Juniors Admirals] and played up until I got pregnant with my son [who is now 11, older brother to a six-year-old sister].”

The hockey love fully blossomed over 11 seasons with the American Hockey League Rochester Americans before getting her chance at a long-pursued NHL opportunity with the Seattle expansion franchise. She started in a support role and gradually advanced to calling game entertainment for all Kraken home matchups this season and last.

“I simply love the sport as a whole and value the community aspect I can bring in to fans each game night,” said Salemi. “I really like being able to showcase our players, and bringing the fans closer to them...The best part is I see this as my way giving back to the sport that did so much for me growing up while getting fans to fall in love with it too.”