‘Inside Out’ Characters Joining Animated NHL Players for Real-Time Game – The Hollywood Reporter

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ESPN will offer an alternate telecast of the contest between the Washington Capitals and New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
By Mike Barnes
Senior Editor
Sadness, Anger, Fear and Anxiety will be among the typical range of emotions on display at an NHL game when the Washington Capitals battle the New York Rangers on Sunday, April 5 for an animated, alternate telecast called the Inside Out Classic.
ESPN+, Disney+, Disney Channel and Disney XD will present the real-time, animated game from Hockey Island — direct from the mind of Inside Out youngster Riley! — while a traditional NHL telecast from Madison Square Garden will be available on ESPN. It all starts at 7 p.m. EDT.
The complementary Inside Out Classic will feature animated players skating alongside Inside Out characters and leverage two types of tracking technologies — NHL EDGE positional data (NHL Puck and Player Tracking) and Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations — to present the action on the ice.

As a promo says, it’s “real-time animated NHL hockey set inside the mind world of Inside Out.”
Voice talent from the Disney/Pixar films, including Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Lewis Black (Anger), Tony Hale (Fear) and Maya Hawke (Anxiety), will be featured in the animated presentation as well.
Using Beyond Sports’ Virtual Commentator technology from Sony, the ESPN commentators calling the cartoon play — Drew Carter, Kevin Weekes and Arda Öcal — will wear virtual reality headsets for motion capture, immersing them in that environment.
In 2023, an NHL Big City Greens Classic featuring the same two teams was the first-of-its-kind real-time volumetric animation presentation in sports.
ESPN and the data-driven sports technology company Beyond Sports this year expanded its agreement for alternate telecasts using Disney IP, and ESPN has produced multiple animated alternate telecasts under the agreement as a means to attract new and casual fans to sports.

Last season, the NHL produced a Hockeyverse Matchup of the Week on Saturday mornings that ran on NHL Network in the U.S., on Sportsnet in Canada and globally on the NHL YouTube channel.
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