Coming off of a strong regular season, the NHL opened its postseason at an even hotter pace.
The opening weekend of the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs averaged 1.53 million viewers across ESPN and TNT Sports (seven telecasts), up 81% from last year (five telecasts) and the highest average on record.
Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will give this year a leg up in any historical comparisons, but they would not come close to explaining a year-over-year increase of such size.
The opening weekend slate included the three most-watched opening round games ever on cable, excluding Game 7s. Penguins-Flyers Game 1 led the way with a 0.9 rating and 2.15 million viewers in primetime, up 119% from last year’s equivalent Avalanche-Stars window on TNT (981K).
Wild-Stars led-in with a 0.8 and 1.94 million, up 140% from Blues-Jets on TNT last year (810K). On Sunday, Bruins-Sabres drew a 0.8 and 1.71 million — up 116% from last year, albeit an all-Canadian Senators-Maple Leafs game that aired on ESPN2 (794K).
(The all-time high for a first round game on cable, including Game 7s, is 3.10 million for Panthers-Bruins Game 7 on TNT Sports in 2023.)
Bookending the ESPN opening weekend slate, Senators-Hurricanes drew a 0.55 and 1.28 million on Saturday afternoon and Mammoth-Golden Knights a 0.52 and 1.00 million Sunday night. The latter was up 27% from last year, when the network carried Wild-Golden Knights immediately following “Sunday Night Baseball” (735K).
The full five-game ESPN slate averaged 1.6 million, up 141% from the network’s three-game slate last year.
Over on TNT Sports, Sunday’s Canadiens-Lightning Game 1 averaged 1.4 million in a window that overlapped with Bruins-Sabres on ESPN. Kings-Avalanche led in with 1.3 million, up nearly 50% from Devils-Hurricanes on ESPN a year ago (880K). Those two games rank as the most-watched first round openers on TNT Sports.
Keep in mind that the NHL is the last of the four major sports that allows regional sports networks to carry coverage of opening round playoff games, meaning that each of the games had additional viewers not included in the national average.
