RALEIGH, N.C. – Training camp has finally arrived for the Carolina Hurricanes, but the ice at the arena looked more like a movie set than a hockey rink earlier this week. Between the massive LED wall, stadium lighting, multi-camera setup, fog machines and more, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Raleighwood’ had become more than just a nickname – and that was just the on-ice set at the team’s 2024 media day event.

“I look at it like Christmas,” said Senior Director of Creative Services Cato Cataldo. “We have all our toys to play with, and now we can start to build everything that the fans will see throughout the year.”

This year’s media day actually took place over a span of three days, where Cataldo and the Canes’ creative crew were once again tasked with capturing a season’s worth of content for various departments and partners before the first puck even drops.

Day one sees players arrive to the arena in staggered time slots before moving from station to station, posing for photos in Canes merchandise in one area before competing in tailgate games in the next, followed by interviews, in-game videoboard messages and more in their remaining stops.

All in all, it’s about a five-hour process to get through the off-ice needs for the bulk of the roster.

“Monday is our ‘fun day.’ Monday is where we have the guys come through in their street clothes and we’ll get them in some Canes (retail) gear and they’ll make their way around to different stations basically just showing their personality and having fun,” said Cataldo.

“The goal there is either to set them up to be competitive and chirp each other or show their camaraderie. We just want to set them up to be themselves – this is a really fun group, the guys are so close, so Monday is a lot of fun.”

Fun things are coming soon pic.twitter.com/yamf9aiH29

— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) September 17, 2024

Days two and three bring the action onto the ice, where the focus shifts to capturing content in full equipment. With the rink split for video at one end and photography at the other, players knock out footage and imagery designed to show off their best sides. The items gathered here will be heavily leaned upon throughout the season.

“We want to do it on the ice and keep the players in their element, that’s where it all comes to life. That’s where we get the bulk of our footage that we can share with Bally Sports, you’ll see it in hype videos, our intro video throughout the year, player features, starting lineups. We’ll use that footage quite a bit,” said Cataldo.

Versatility is the name of the game for the creative team, which oversees the Canes’ video, design and photography efforts. They take pride in producing most, if not all, of the imagery used on the media day sets. That said, there are always certain things they’ll have to lean on vendors to provide.

Things like building that 40-plus-foot LED wall on the ice, for example.

“(This year) we’re going for something a little more clean and bold, and that’s where the LEDs come in. We have a massive LED wall from a vendor, Vū Studios. Then we want to complement with stadium lighting, so we have Atlas Stageworks who’s bringing in this massive five-finger truss that we’re going to hang above (the wall). Then we’re working with a production studio who’s going to help us shoot the set on cinema cameras.

“What they’re providing is the blank canvas, and then we create against it to then showcase our new look and feel for the season and our new campaign…we’re trying to do as much in-house to produce a big production, but we’re working with vendors and filling gaps as we need.”

LED technology also plays a key role on the photography side. Getting imagery of players in one uniform is good – getting shots in every uniform is great.

“This year, we’re also doing an additional LED wall that we can rotate the backgrounds to get different looks,” said Cataldo. “We can switch the background every photo so that we get black and red look, white and red, all white, and so on. That allows us to complement each of our three jerseys very quickly.”

Quickness is key when dealing with upwards of 50 players, but not at the expense of details. Every inch of every set and every second of every day is scheduled and scrutinized. So while the three days go by quick, the entire event is months in the making.

“(Planning starts) the first day after the season ends. Once our season’s over, in my mind, the new one begins,” said Cataldo. “We had our first meeting a few weeks after the season where we started to talk about slogans and then we’ve been working on the art direction all summer. So it pretty much takes up the whole offseason.”

With media day festivities in the rearview, the clock is already ticking.

Just three weeks remain until Opening Night presented by Lenovo, when the fruits of the Canes’ creative team’s labor are revealed with the debut of this year’s campaign launch video alongside some unique theatrical elements that elevate the fan experience above any other sport, according to Cataldo.

“What I think is most interesting is, because of ice projection, we have way more elements that we can play with to create an experience,” he said.

“So that’s also thought about quite a bit during media day – how can we create an immersive experience for fans to kick off a game? No other sport has that element to it.”

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