Behind the scenes: Beyond puck drops and slapshots

It's a red three-ring binder and carrying it at his side at all times is Tom O'Grady, a decidedly old-school Chicago hockey fan in a decidedly new-school gig - orchestrating the in-house entertainment for Blackhawks games at the United Center.

Inside is roughly 100 pages of exactly how the night's production will go - virtually down to the second. The sponsor reads by public address announcer Gene Honda, the music, the Ice Crew, the sizzling opening, the videos, the Fan Cam, shoot the puck contestants, more music, special guests in the house -

This isn't your father's game-day production. Not even close.

"You try to be the seventh man on the ice," O'Grady says of his job more than 40 nights a season as executive producer of entertainment.

It's obviously working well because for the second straight season O'Grady, along with Sergio Lozano, senior director of scoreboard operations, won the Golden Matrix Award for the best overall video display in the National Hockey League.

Details, details

A few hours before the puck drops, while Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville is in the locker room addressing his troops about a game with playoff implications, O'Grady and his staff meet in a conference room upstairs carrying that same sense of urgency.

On this night, former Hawk Eric Nesterenko is in the house to sign autographs and O'Grady, 50, who grew up an avid Hawks fan while attending Foreman High School, wants to make sure the man gets his due.

The question of where to get Nesterenko on camera is debated. Get him where he is signing autographs or bring him up to a skybox? The decision is made to bring him up to a skybox.

"Just having a Stanley Cup champion in the building as we head toward the playoffs, I think, is an important thing to acknowledge," O'Grady tells his staff of mostly 20-something professionals. "Hopefully he'll get a nice round of applause."

O'Grady knows he will thanks to a lesson learned earlier in the season when Bears legend Dick Butkus attended a Hawks game.

"We had him on the ice for a first-period presentation," O'Grady recalled. "Well, people clear out during the intermissions and it was kind of empty. I thought Dick didn't get the respect he deserves so we get him back on the board in the third period.

"We had a nice break and we got him up there and then Sergio followed with these great hits from Dick's career - just nailing people - and you could see the (Hawks) players looking up like, 'Oh my God, what a maniac.' He got a standing ovation. I was like 'Don't do anything, keep the camera on Dick.' Then we slid into the next puck drop. It was perfect.

"Those are the good moments."

Tools of the trade

Up in his perch in the first row of the press box level, O'Grady sits next to Honda and a co-worker. In front of him sits his binder, a dry erase board, and a device with a big red button - think the "Easy button" from those TV commercials - the tools he'll need to create his magic on this night.

The red button is the goal horn. But because things get a little hectic, it only works when a key is turned to activate it - thus avoiding any accidental blasts.

Behind him and up a level sit the off-ice officials. Because the music is blaring and the horn is sounding following a goal, O'Grady has found the best way to communicate in the chaos is with old-school dry erase boards. The officials write down who scored and who assisted, hold it up for O'Grady to see, and he passes the info along to Honda.

"I'll be like, 'Was it Toews, was it Toews, was it Toews?' while I'm pounding the goal horn," O'Grady said. "Then they'll be like, it was Toews. I'll be like 'OK, play Johnny Be Good' (to celebrate the captain's goal).'"

Toews, along with Patrick Sharp ("Sharp Dressed Man") and Patrick Kane ("Like a Hurricane") have their own goal songs, everyone else celebrates with "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis (see accompanying story).

While all this is going on, O'Grady is in constant contact via headphones with Lozano, the scoreboard director who sits in a dark room with enough video screens in front of him to make the folks at NASA's mission control jealous.

Everything that appears on the video screens at the UC before, during and after games comes from Lozano and his staff. With six camera angles, overhead shots provided by the league, and the ability to use replays off local television coverage, Lozano, 41, has plenty of options to consider.

"It's all the displays I need to see; it's all the cameras, it's the different angles of the replay machines, it's a couple of channels from the video server from the character generator," Lozano said, while pointing to more than a dozen screens. "It starts with all the details that are involved, and then it's the effort and the creative input from my staff, and we take it from there."

"We're so committed and dedicated in making sure the show that goes out there is top-notch."

Music man

In a room around the corner from Lozano sits Craig Schultz, who has an estimated 10,000 songs at his fingertips, but the music maestro for the Blackhawks knows regardless of which one he chooses, some portion of the fan base at the UC won't dig it.

"You can't please everybody," said Schultz, now in his 10th year on the job.

How does he know?

"I get a lot of feedback via the community page on the (Hawks) Web site," he said with a smile. "You've got 20,000 people in the stadium. But most of the time everybody likes what I do."

And you can't say he's not trying.

"I always try to mix it up a lot; give people new experiences," he said. "I'm always listening to the radio and downloading new songs. But you also have the classics that people love to hear."

As for fans who complain about the music, all he can say is, "I'm doing the best I can."

The past & present

While all the music and the video wizardry adds to the spectacle of a game night, there are some fans who long for the days when the entertainment was simply Frank Pellico at the organ and the action on the ice.

O'Grady feels your pain.

"Frank Pellico is part of the DNA of this building," said O'Grady, an admitted sports junkie from Chicago who spent 13 years working in creative services for the NBA. "The organ is such an important ingredient to make our building sound a lot different from any other professional stadium. Frank's style, it sounds like a rink.

"Our goal is to make sure we listen to the fans. I'm on the message boards all the time. I played hockey. so you kind of feel what the players are going to like. We try to freshen it up every game."

It makes for a much louder, more vibrant atmosphere in a building that just a few years ago was lucky to hold 7,000 fans on a nightly basis. Now it's a sellout every night and things couldn't be more different.

"I don't think many people have a problem with it," said Paul Wiltberger, a season-ticket holder for 19 years. "The noise level is really up there now. I mean, there's so much more excitement here than there was the last few years."

And if there isn't, O'Grady is on the case.

"If I can feel we're a little flat, I'll say let's knock off the sponsor reads for a while and let's start playing louder music - more hard-core music - because I can feel like we've lost the crowd," he said. "You've got 22,000 people in here who love this team and love this sport. You have an obligation to try to try to keep them buzzing."

A new frontier

With the Blackhawks in the playoffs for the first time in years, the adjustments for O'Grady and Co. will only continue.

"I think you'll see less sponsor reads and more effort in every little detail," he said. "My goal is to pull back because this place - you won't need to do a lot once the playoffs start. It'll be less is more. Let these guys own the place."

And here's some music to old-school fans' ears:

"It'll be like the old days in the Chicago Stadium."

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