It may not have seemed particularly attractive on paper, but Hurricanes-Golden Knights ended up as one of the more memorable — and most-watched — Stanley Cup finals.
Sunday’s Hurricanes-Golden Knights NHL Stanley Cup Final Game 5 averaged a 2.8 rating and 5.92 million viewers on ABC, trailing only Oilers-Panthers Game 7 on ABC in 2024 (7.67M) as the most-watched NHL game in seven years — since Blues-Bruins Game 7 on NBC in 2019 (8.91M, per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics).
The Hurricanes’ title-clinching shutout, which peaked with 7.2 million in the 10:45 PM ET quarter-hour, ranks as the most-watched Game 6 of a Cup Final since that 2019 series (6.62M). Ratings and viewership doubled last year’s clinching Oilers-Panthers Game 6 on TNT Sports (1.4, 2.76M) and increased a third and 40% respectively from the previous Game 6 on ABC, Panthers-Oilers in 2024 (2.1, 4.20M).
The full, six-game Hurricanes-Golden Knights series averaged a 2.5 and 5.23 million, making it the fifth-most watched Cup Final on record (dating back to 1994) — trailing only Blues-Bruins (5.47M per Nielsen/Adobe), Blackhawks-Lightning in 2015 (5.55M), Blackhawks-Bruins in 2013 (5.75M), and the four-game Red Wings-Flyers sweep in 1997 (5.29M).
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 months into a new methodology that integrates its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will skew historical comparisons, particularly to years before 2020. Series like Blackhawks-Flyers in 2010 (5.17M) or Red Wings-Hurricanes in 2002 (5.11M) would likely rank higher all things being equal.
Most-watched Stanley Cup Final series, 1994-present
This year’s Cup Final was only the second on record in which every game averaged at least four million viewers, joining the four-game Red Wings-Flyers sweep in 1997. It is the first Cup Final in which at least six games hit the four million mark. (Note that it was only the third Cup Final to air entirely on broadcast television.)
Viewership increased 106% from last year’s six-game series on TNT Sports and 26% from the seven-game series on ABC in 2024, both won by the Panthers over the Oilers.
It was to be expected that viewership would increase for this year’s Cup Final, the first all-American matchup in three years — and the first such matchup on broadcast television in four. Even so, few would have expected a pairing of Sun Belt teams to rank among the ten most-watched series on record, even with the changes in Nielsen methodology that have largely benefited sports viewing.
