Stanley Cup Final viewership continued to trend up in Game 5, which officially posted the second-largest NHL audience in seven years.
Thursday’s Hurricanes-Golden Knights NHL Stanley Cup Final Game 5 averaged a 2.8 rating and 5.84 million viewers on ABC, trailing only Oilers-Panthers Game 7 on ABC in 2024 (7.67M) as the most-watched NHL game since Blues-Bruins Game 7 in 2019. The previous second-place mark was 5.82 million for Avalanche-Lightning Game 6 on ABC in 2022.
The Hurricanes’ win, which peaked with 6.9 million viewers in the 9:30 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the largest audience for a Game 5 in the Cup Final since the clinching Capitals-Golden Knights on NBC in 2018 (6.59M). It ranks seventh among the 27 total Game 5 telecasts dating back to 1994.
The 2.8 rating is also the highest for a Game 5 since Blues-Bruins in ’19 (3.1).
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.
Ratings and viewership more-than-doubled last year’s Saturday night Panthers-Oilers Game 5 on TNT Sports (1.2, 2.70M), and increased a third and 42% respectively from the previous Game 5 on ABC, Oilers-Panthers in 2024 (2.1, 4.10M).
Entering Sunday’s clinching Game 6, the Cup Final was averaging 5.11 million viewers — marking the highest five-game average for a Cup Final since Blackhawks-Bruins in 2013 (5.40M). This year’s average trails only 2013 and the four-game Red Wings-Flyers series in 1997 as the highest on record through five games.
Viewership is up 104% from the first five games of last year’s series and 49% from the first five games in 2024.
This year’s series is the first Cup Final on record in which each of the first five games averaged at least four million viewers. (Each game in 1997 averaged four million, but the series ended in four games.)
Assuming an audience north of four million for Game 6 — a safe bet — this year’s series will be the first Cup Final in which six games averaged at least four million. Currently, it is one of only five series to top that mark five times, joining 2009, 2013, 2019 and 2022.
