36 Years and One Month

According to the league, NBC’s coverage of Wednesday’s Stanley Cup clinching game “was the most-watched and highest-rated NHL game in 36 years”. Granted, the feat doesn’t sound quite as impressive when you consider that U.S. conventional television didn’t broadcast the Stanley Cup Final for 15 of those 36 years (cable only from 1981 through 1994; season cancelled in 2005). And let’s also not forget that the two teams involved in this year’s final, Chicago and Philadelphia, represent the third and sixth largest populations in the United States. So, in many ways, it would have been unsettling had the game not produced such high ratings. Nonetheless, the average audience of 8,280,000 that watched Wednesday’s contest on NBC is still excellent news for the NHL. Here's hoping the league can take advantage of this momentum going into next year.

In Canada, the final game drew 4,077,000 on CBC. Not only does this not go back 36 seasons, it doesn’t even rank as the top audience this year: Game 7 of the second round Canadiens-Penguins matchup, played less than a month ago, drew 4,239,000 to the public broadcaster. Over at RDS, play-by-play man Pierre Houde seemed to indicate yesterday that his network attracted about 1,500,000 for the final game (still to be confirmed) – significantly up from the average of 593,000 who tuned in for the first five games of the series, but a drop in the bucket compared to the 2,417,000 who watched the decisive game of the Canadiens-Penguins affair on the French specialty channel.

Full ratings for the entire series will be available next week on a network-by-network basis, complete with tables, charts, and my trademark APH rating scale. Until then, enjoy the weekend!