This week is one of Mark Tamar’s most challenging - yet fulfilling - weeks of the year. Tamar is the Blues’ VP of Entertainment, which puts him in charge of creating the video that appears on the Jumbotron at home games.

“This is the video that runs right before the players come on the ice,” Tamar said Wednesday. “The idea is to get the crowd as excited as possible about seeing their heroes. The shot that we’re doing today is a ‘team hero’ shot . . . bigger than life, we’re ready to play hockey. That’s what we’re trying to promote.”

Fans won’t see the video until the Blues’ home opener on Oct. 8, but Tamar was gracious enough to send us a still shot to post on the “Morning Skate” blog. Take a look . . .

Blues

Tamar said that his crew began planning for this year’s video shortly after the Blues lost in the playoffs last April.

“As soon as the seasons ends, we meet within two weeks and start kicking around ideas,’ Tamar said. “This is our biggest production of the year. There’s probably about 10 of us that sit around and talk. We probably come up with seven different ideas for an opening video and then hammer it out until we like what we have. Then we start the production process - hiring a crew, picking locations, determining who’s in which shot and how it will work with music.”

Coming up with ideas isn’t as easy as it sounds.

“One of the biggest challenges is to come up with new ways to excite the fans without doing the same kind of things we’ve done before,” Tamar said. “We always have the same parameters . . . the game of hockey and getting the fans excited. We’re always working within that framework, but looking for news to get the fans excited.”

It seems to be working. Tamar spent eight years with the Washington Capitals and he’s now in his third year with the Blues. In Tamar’s first two years in St. Louis, the team’s in-game entertainment has improved dramatically at Scottrade Center and the videos have been a big reason for that. 

“I think there’s an expectation that we’ve established,” Tamar said. “The crowd really expects something big and exciting. We spend a lot of time coming up with a huge project that will hopefully satisfy their needs for the excitement level and get them up for the team coming out.”

Tamar & Co. will find out how they’ve done on Oct. 8 against the Atlanta Thrashers.

“That’s really the payback for our crew, the response that we get,” he said. ”That’s the beauty of my business. If we can get the fans excited, that’s our reward. It’s not about how the video looks when we’re in our office. It’s what the response is.”

JR