“Watch this.”
It’s the first episode of the second season of “FACEOFF: Inside the NHL,” the docuseries that is launching on Prime Video on Friday.
The show puts you in the seats with Keith Tkachuk at Bell Centre in Montreal on Feb. 15 as his sons line up for the opening draw for the United States against Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off.
The camera catches his facial expressions, and the microphone picks up his comments — including two key words, anticipating chaos — before Matthew Tkachuk drops his gloves. Brady Tkachuk drops his gloves three seconds later.
Director Daniel Amigone stood 10 feet away from Keith Tkachuk at the time and thought immediately, “Oh, my God. People are going to lose their minds.” When the fights blew up into the biggest story in sports, he was sure this would be a knockout.
“The entire world is talking about it, and I know that we have something no one has,” said Amigone, who is also an executive producer. “We are going to add a layer to this story that people already love, people are already going crazy for. I’m literally getting goosebumps even thinking about it. That was the moment where I wanted to tell the entire world, like, ‘Holy [bleep], just wait. Just wait till you see this.’”
The docuseries has many moments like that featuring characters like the Tkachuk brothers, Sidney Crosby, Anze Kopitar, Seth Jarvis, Brad Marchand, Sean Monahan, William Nylander, Brendan Shanahan and Zach Werenski.
Box To Box and NHL Productions gathered hundreds of hours of footage, perhaps the most ever for an NHL project. They boiled it down to the best material, cutting, shaping and polishing storylines for six episodes of 40 to 50 minutes each.
All six episodes drop at the same time, so you can binge.