'FACEOFF: Inside the NHL' season 2 set launches today

"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.

These aren’t just souped-up hockey highlights. There is less on-ice footage, and when there is, the emphasis is on angles you don’t usually see. There is more off-ice footage that takes you places you can’t normally go.

You’re hanging out in homes, plus hotel, locker and training rooms. You’re sitting down in kitchens and restaurants. You’re riding along in cars, buses and golf carts.

“We made a conscious effort to go behind the scenes a bit more and to let the audience have a little deeper dive into who the player is and what makes that player tick,” said NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer, who is also an executive producer. “We’re very proud of what we’ve put together.”

At times, it’s surprising how open and vulnerable people are -- and how much the NHL allowed to air.

This is just a sample:

In Episode 1, you see what led up to the fights at 4 Nations. You hear what Brady said at a family dinner the night before and what he said to the Canada bench ahead of puck drop. You also hear what each coach said in the locker room before overtime of the 4 Nations championship game.

Episode 2 follows the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Gaudreau family after the death of Blue Jackets forward Johnny Gaudreau and his brother, Matthew.

“Obviously, for good reasons, people don’t want to talk about this stuff,” Amigone said. “It’s hard, and it’s emotional, and I think to the credit of the people in Columbus across the board, they let us in, and they showed us what grieving looks like to them and how they were doing it.”

Episode 3 raises eyebrows and questions as Crosby and his agent, Pat Brisson, talk about his future with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Amigone called Crosby a “white whale,” because Crosby, who usually guards his privacy, allowed cameras to follow him to places like his offseason home.

“Sid and Pat were just amazing to us on this project,” Amigone said. “It’s hard to get that kind of access. It was certainly not guaranteed throughout. Hopefully, we represented it accurately, and we stand behind what we have in the show.”

Kopitar comes off as a Hollywood star, a veteran leader and a humble family man at the same time. Listen to what Will Ferrell says about him. You can tell Ferrell has been watching the Los Angeles Kings closely.

Episode 4 reveals the human side of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ failures in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. You tour Shanahan’s childhood home, feel what it means to him to rebuild his hometown team and then sit at the kitchen table with him after he is fired as president.

You also hear what coach Craig Berube says in the Toronto locker room after an embarrassing loss and what Matthew Tkachuk chirps at the Maple Leafs on the ice while playing for the Florida Panthers. The trailer for the show reveals one line: “How scared are you guys? How scared are you?” He’s even more savage singling out Nylander.

Jarvis, the 23-year-old Carolina Hurricanes center, shows off his personality and opens up about his insecurities in Episode 5. You see the poster of a player on the door of his childhood bedroom. Later, you see him sitting beside that player in the Canada locker room at 4 Nations.

You also hear general manager Eric Tulsky’s first conversations with forward Mikko Rantanen after Carolina acquires Rantanen in a trade with the Colorado Avalanche. Later, you see Jarvis and teammate Jesperi Kotkaniemi on the golf course learning Rantanen has been flipped to the Dallas Stars. Kotkaniemi’s reaction is priceless.

In Episode 6, you hear more chirping from Marchand and Matthew Tkachuk, enemies turned teammates. You see Matthew Tkachuk on the training table dealing with the injuries through which he played to help the Panthers win the Stanley Cup for the second straight season.

You also hear Edmonton Oilers forward Corey Perry rip into his teammates during the first intermission of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. You knew he had said something. You knew it had sparked the Oilers, who trailed 3-0 after the first period and came back to win 5-4 in overtime. The media made it the story that night, but the media weren’t in the locker room, so the reports could be only second hand, vague. Now you get to experience the raw emotion as if you were in the locker room yourself.

That’s what this is all about.

“We wanted to tell those stories,” Mayer said. “But how are we going to tell them in a different way? How are we going to show people something that they haven’t seen? Give them something that they didn’t know? Give them something that’s going to be memorable and unique?

“I think we accomplished that.”