Dan O’Neill

As vice president of arena and event operations at the National Hockey League, Dan O’Neill oversees all technical operations for NHL events, both domestically and internationally, including the NHL All-Star Weekend, NHL Draft, NHL Winter Classic, NHL Stadium Series, NHL Global Series, NHL China Games, and NHL Awards. Reporting to Peter DelGiacco, NHL executive vice president and CTO, O’Neill’s responsibilities also include leading the NHL’s broadcast operations group, which supports all television and radio national and regional rightsholders, as well as international broadcast efforts.

Since joining the league in 1996, O’Neill has led multiple league-wide technical deployments. Most recently, during the 2019-20 season, the NHL paused play for 142 days due to the coronavirus pandemic, and O’Neill was a key contributor to the execution of the NHL’s Return to Play plan. O’Neill and his technical operations team were tasked with supporting the integration of a made-for-TV event setting with video screens and production lighting that were part of the NHL’s two secure “bubbles” in Toronto and Edmonton. His team also deployed specialty cameras including a JitaCam and 4K cameras with new vantage points, virtual graphics, and synthetic crowd noise, while managing all broadcast transmission technology. In addition, O’Neill led the technological infrastructure build to support the unique needs of the teams while they resided at the hotels in Toronto and Edmonton, and was responsible for the deployment of the NHL’s CLEAR App for COVID-19 symptom checks and temperature screening.

During his tenure at the NHL, O’Neill served as the IT lead for the build out of the NHL’s real-time scoring system in every league arena. O’Neill also serves as a liaison between the NHL’s Hockey Operations department and all 31 clubs for technical matters including league-wide applications and tools for statistics, video coaching systems, goal lights and timing systems, and Club application websites.

An integral member of the NHL’s facility workgroup which focuses on the development of new arenas, arena guidelines, arena renovations, and broadcast integrations, O’Neill also ensures NHL arenas are the most technologically advanced across the sports landscape.

O’Neill graduated from Ithaca College with a B.S. in sport management.

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