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Patrick Kane corrals the puck near the slot, splits two defenders, goes airborne momentarily and flips the puck over the goaltender’s left shoulder.

The blast of the goal horn is followed by fans dancing to “Chelsea Dagger.”

Blackhawks fans can count themselves lucky in that they’ve experienced many thrilling snapshots like Kane’s unbelievable goal against Montreal recently. And while memories such as these are why fans pack the United Center, there’s a slew of people whose job it is to entertain the crowd between the highlights on the ice.

All the scoreboard videos, on-ice presentations, even Tommy Hawk—all of it is designed to mesmerize fans without distracting from the game itself.

“We don’t want to take over the game,” said A.J. Dolan, the Blackhawks’ senior manager of game operations and entertainment. “We’re never too circus-y, and we never make fun of the other team. It’s hockey with a side of fun, not fun with a side of hockey.”

On game nights, that task involves dozens of employees working largely behind the scenes, including 25 wearing headsets in different parts of the arena.

Call it the TV show within the TV show.

LOOK UP

During Hawks (and Bulls) games, you’ll find Sergio Lozano directing 14 staff members in the control room on the seventh floor near the press box. They are surrounded by dozens of monitors and are responsible for everything on the board from the time the doors open until the lights go out for the night.

It can mean a lot of 12- or 14-hour days between September and June. Not that he’s complaining.

“There might be a Bulls game one day and a Hawks game the next,” said Lozano, the senior director of scoreboard operations at the United Center. “If you look at our December schedule, it’s pretty tight, back and forth with both teams. They’re long days, but they’re fun days.”

One of the stars of the pregame show, which is also designed by Lozano’s team in cooperation with the Hawks, is the 3-D projections shown before the game. After renting the 12-projector system for the first few presentations starting in 2013, it became a permanent part of the UC repertoire last season. Highlights, photos, video game-type graphics—if it’s available to them, they’ve tried it.

“Our job is to push the envelope and see what people haven’t seen before, and there is a trial and error with that,” Dolan said. “It might be a little weird, people might not get it, but I think that’s OK in our line of work because if you’re not trying new things, then you’re just kind of settling for what is safe, and I don’t think that’s what we want to do.”

Dozens of monitors surround the more than a dozen employees who control the United Center scoreboard during each Blackhawks game.
Dozens of monitors surround the more than a dozen employees who control the United Center scoreboard during each Blackhawks game.

The Hawks even have taken a page out of a popular band’s playbook.

“We were the first team ever to do the synced-up wristbands [that light up], for the 2013 banner-raising ceremony,” Dolan said. “We were the first professional team to do that with on-ice projection. I saw Coldplay do that and that kind of sparked our interest.”

All these plans come together days before each game, when Dolan gives Lozano the basic rundown; that way Lozano’s team can put graphics and other display features in place. That said, the flow of each game means changes on the fly.

“It’s never like ‘A to Z, let’s run through it and it’s just scripted,’ ” Dolan said. “Let’s say Corey [Crawford] makes a great save and we have to do sponsor stuff. Well, [we might say] ‘Let’s switch this up so we can get out of our break quickly and Serg can show some replays so we can get some pump-up music into the faceoff so we can keep it more hockey and less sponsorship.’

“I don’t want to make it seem like sponsorship is second tier, because it is very important to us, but it’s how to fit that in within the game’s scope so it’s not out of place.”

They must be doing something right, as early this year the Blackhawks game operations department and United Center scoreboard operations department were named the NHL’s Best Overall Video Display and Production for the second consecutive year. The award is handed out at the annual Information Display Entertainment Association Conference.

“I think people are coming here to be entertained,” said Lozano, who has worked for the United Center in several capacities since the arena opened in 1994. “And I think they know when they come to a Blackhawks game they expect to be informed and entertained at the level we’re doing it now on a consistent basis.”

The digit: Six. That’s how many in-house cameras are used per game at the United Center (two wireless cameras that roam the concourse and other areas of the stadium, and four cameras at fixed locations). Those are cameras used for the Kiss Cam, Fan Cam and other promotions during each game.

CUE THE MUSIC

Dolan and the Blackhawks crew understand that in certain situations—a goaltender makes a huge save, a player hits the post with a shot, two players drop the gloves, or goals are scored, of course—it’s best to let the crowd noise carry the emotion of the arena.

Other times, the team employs music to put fans in a positive state of mind.

“For me, [music is] the No. 1 emotional draw outside of the actual game,” Dolan said. “I put myself in the seats and try to think of what I’d want to listen to at certain times. Every game is different. The first period is different from the last five minutes of the third period. Whether it’s ‘Fight for Your Right’ by the Beastie Boys, which we play all the time, or a song no one’s heard that’s by Avenged Sevenfold that’s just kind of out there but has a really cool track, that’s something that we would try and see if it works and if it works, we’ll try it again.”

Dolan calls about 75 percent of the music during Hawks home games. The other 25 percent comes from Hawks DJ Michael Horn and longtime organist Frank Pellico.

“It’s really kind of a feel thing,” said Dolan, who added that there will be about 100 songs played from the time the doors open until the end of the game. “You’ll hear a lot of Pearl Jam, you’ll hear a lot of ’90s alt rock. You hear from Led Zeppelin or the Doors or the Beatles, a lot of stuff like that as well. We try to be across the board. I think we do a pretty good job, but there are also times when you play a song and you go, ugh, that didn’t work.”

Horn also handles a lot of the warmup mixes and sound design and editing for the team’s highlight videos, and Pellico provides the music as Jim Cornelison belts out the national anthem as well as other spots throughout the game.

The franchise collects feedback through its website as well as through social media.

“Overall it’s mostly positive,” Dolan said. “No news is almost good news in our industry because if you’re kind of just there and you’re doing it and it’s seamless, then you’re doing a good job.”

The digit: 25. That’s how many years Pellico has been the Blackhawks organist, which predates the United Center by three years. He’s such a fixture that he’s performed at Hawks championship rallies as well as before the premieres of team films commemorating Stanley Cups.

BUT … IT LOOKS SO EASY

The concept is simple: During the second intermission, fans and celebrities shoot a puck toward the goal, and if it goes through one of three slots in a board covering the net, that person wins money for themself or their favorite charity.

It has taken on a life of its own in its 35-plus years, in part because famous faces from Cuba Gooding Jr. to Danica Patrick to Simone Biles to numerous others have tried their hand at it.

Shoot the Puck did see some backlash two years ago as fans circulated a petition online to encourage the organization to stop playing the song titled “The Stripper” while female fans participated. In August 2014, the team announced it would cease the practice, insisting the change was inevitable.

“As we’ve grown in our demographics, we’ve had to change certain elements, and that’s certainly one of them,” said Peter Hassen, the Hawks’ vice president of marketing. “I don’t think we could have just the good-looking woman come out and have all the men entertained. We’re not hiding from that, that’s part of what it was and what hockey was maybe 20 years ago.

“But hockey and the Blackhawks brand have elevated and changed to the point where 45 percent of our fan base is female and we can’t ignore that and we have to answer to that. We have to make sure that we’re entertaining those folks as well and not embarrassing somebody or putting somebody in an awkward situation.”

Even with that rough patch, Shoot the Puck is a perennial crowd-pleaser. Case in point: Hassen said even NHL replay officials in Toronto have made a point to watch it. Same goes for longtime NBC play-by-play announcer Mike “Doc” Emrick when he’s in town to call a Hawks game.

“We see people betting on it now and then,” Hassen said. “It’s taken on a whole subculture of its own. … If you watch, it’s really remarkable how many celebrities from Mr. T to athletes around Chicago [participate], and you’re like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe how many people have done this.’ “

The digit: Zero. That’s how many shirts Gooding Jr. had on by the time he was done celebrating his Shoot the Puck success in September 2014.

Bonus digit: 13,500. That’s how many Hawks shirts are dropped via parachute from the United Center rafters during the regular season. Your best chance to get one is on a Sunday; 500 are dropped during games played on Sundays as opposed to 250 on games played on every other day of the week.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

In addition to the stats, instant replays, highlight reels and other scoreboard staples, every so often the organization unveils snippets featuring Hawks players letting their guard down or being quizzed on pop culture.

“It’s a little more pressure-packed than you think,” defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk said. “You get on the spot there and all of the sudden you can’t think of movies or characters. Those [videos] are always fun.”

One that debuted this season is titled “Stranger Tweets,” merging Netflix’s hit “Stranger Things” with odd comments from fans via Twitter. Such as this one that tagged Kane:

” ‘Sometimes when I’m eating alone, I picture @88pkane sitting next to me humming the melody of “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” by Wang Chung,'” Kane reads in the video before looking up and adding, “OK, cool.”

Hawks goaltender Corey Crawford has appeared in several videos, including one that required him and his teammates to name popular songs with only quirky instrumentals as clues.

“[The organization does] a great job with that,” Crawford said. “They always come with some different kind of ideas and the fans love it. … I couldn’t figure out a bunch of [the songs]; I was pretty disappointed. But it’s fun.”

Fans at the UC should be on the lookout for the public-service announcement that features a stern-faced Jonathan “Captain Serious” Toews extolling the virtues of fans waiting until play is stopped before leaving their seats. It’s a hockey twist on NBC’s “The more you know” spots.

“Leaving your seat during game play isn’t funny,” a deadpan Toews says in the video. “It’s selfish and wrong.”

“We gave him a couple lines [and said], ‘Which one would you want,’ and he’s like, ‘I want this one,’ ” Dolan said. “He’d say it two or three different times. Once you get him in front of the camera, he wants to make sure he does it right.”

“We’ve been fortunate because this whole core group kind of came in together young, and that’s when we really started to push the envelope with Sergio and his crew and A.J.,” Hassen said, referring to players who have won several Stanley Cups, including Kane and Toews. “It really came together at the right time with creative ideas and game presentation and having a willing group of players that are able to do different things that maybe in other situations there’s no access [to players] there.”

The digit: Six. That’s about how many takes Toews needed to deliver his “stay seated” PSA. “We wanted him to be very serious about something that’s important to our fans, but it’s something you can joke with,” Dolan said. “… He killed it, and we’ve run it for two years now.”

@redeyesportschi | chsosa@redeyechicago.com