Situation Room’s “NHL Frozen Frenzy” live blog

5:35 p.m. ET

The Situation Room begins to stir as we approach 30 minutes before the first puck drop of the evening in Philadelphia.

Kris King, Rod Pasma, Sean Ellis and Brad Smith have been here for about an hour. King is executive vice president of hockey operations. Pasma is Group VP of Hockey Operations. Ellis is vice president of hockey operations and official points director. Smith is the director of technical services.

Kay Whitmore arrived a few minutes ago. He is also group vice president.

More game loggers arrive.

This is the central hub of the NHL world, where every decision on every goal is made, where rule changes arise, where every play is recorded, and every decision made by every official on the ice is dissected and dissected.

And this is the busiest night of the season with 16 games starting from 6:00 p.m. ET to 11:00 p.m. ET. It won’t end here until just before 2 a.m. ET, when the final buzzer sounds in the final game of the evening between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Los Angeles Kings.

I’m at the back of the room, with Smith and his IT group to my left. There are four people here and Smith ensures that operations run smoothly, that there are no technical problems and that if there are any, they can be resolved immediately.

I have a view of the entire room, including the 16 large screens on the main wall. King, Whitmore, Pasma and Colin Campbell, the senior executive vice president of hockey operations who runs the room, at a series of stations directly in front of the wall of screens.

Until the middle of the game, 12 game loggers will be present here, four of which are assigned to two games each. They are distributed around the room and each have their own station with four screens. They log everything they see, clip it, and color code it based on their system.

Yellow represents penalties and missed calls. Red represents injuries and player safety clips. Blue represents coaching challenges, video reviews, and close plays at the net. Green represents beautification, arena operations or equipment problems. Lila focuses on the office. Gray doesn’t rely on plays that aren’t clearly defined.

These clips can be used for a number of purposes, including officiating review and education, trends in the game that could lead to rule changes, or the need for further interpretation of current rules, as we have done in recent years with Slashing and Have seen cross checks.

It starts here and there will be a lot going on soon.

The Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals are on the ice warming up.