With Turner Sports and ESPN picking up the playoffs after 16 years, Turner hopes to continue the momentum from a successful regular season in the playoffs. Its games, mainly on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons, averaged 361,000 viewers. That’s an increase of 29% over last year on NBCSN (280,000) and 24% compared with 2019-20 (292,000). Above: Wayne Gretzky takes a break during the pregame show on Oct. 13, 2021, in Atlanta. TNT and TBS are in their first season broadcasting the NHL and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Jeremy Freeman/Turner Sports via AP)
Peacock has added premium streaming as an option for all of the National Hockey League’s remaining Stanley Cup Semifinal games. As previously announced, the games will also air on NBCSN or USA Network and NBC Sports digital platforms. The series starts June 14 at 9 p.m. ET with Game 1 in the semifinal between the Montreal Canadiens and Vegas Golden Knights.
The National Hockey League on Tuesday said its Stanley Cup Qualifiers games will start Aug. 1, with NBC Sports airing up to 120 hours of coverage.
This year’s Stanley Cup finals really weren’t much of a contest; the Los Angeles Kings needed only five games to dispatch the New York Rangers. But considering how noncompetitive the series was, NBC drew pretty good ratings. The fifth game, when the Kings clinched the title, averaged 6 million total viewers on Friday night, according to Nielsen, marking the most-watched game five of the finals since 2008.
NBC Sports narrowly avoided its worst-case June scenario: a four-game sweep in the Stanley Cup Finals. Had Los Angeles closed the series Thursday, not only would NBC have missed out on a lengthy series full of ad sales, Lord Stanley’s Trophy would have been handed out on NBC Sports Network — a subscription cable channel that pulls in far fewer viewers than the broadcast network.
