APPLE

Apple Will Be Fielding a Hockey Team

Well, not exactly, but sort of, though it seems not to be their idea

So whose idea was this? Photo of and by author

The headlines I’ve seen on this are all pretty similar: “NHL Officials Eagerly Embrace the Apple Watch”, “Apple Watch has been playing a crucial role for NHL referees”, “NHL Referees Are (Almost) All Wearing Apple Watches”, and so on.

What they are talking about is a special “NHL Watch Comms” app which provides real-time notifications to officials, including game clock countdowns, penalty clock countdowns, and jersey numbers of players in the penalty box. The referees will get real-time haptic notifications at the same time as all the other refs wearing watches.

The watches are supplied by the NHL; the refs do not use their own watches. Well, maybe they could wear their own on their other wrist? Probably not: the app doesn’t allow anything else to run to avoid distractions, so the NHL likely wouldn’t want the refs checking anything else.

One feature mentioned is that the game clock is on their wrist so they don’t even have to look up at the scoreboard.

No, you can’t download the app. Well, if you are an NHL referee you can, but not anyone else. I’m an equal opportunity sports hater, so I don’t care, but wouldn’t you love to be at the…