If you were looking for a rematch of the 2014 Winter Classic but indoors at Joe Louis Arena, the NHL Network and CBC will help you out for the early game on Saturday.
The NHL Network will also show us Vancouver in a road game in St. Louis, hopefully with a Rogers Sportsnet Pacific feed, on Thursday.
The late CBC game on Saturday features the Canucks hosting Tampa Bay and Steven Stamkos.
City TV will have Les Habs as they welcome Patrick Roy and the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday night and an all-Canadian matchup for Hometown Hockey as Calgary travels to Winnipeg. That matchup would blow the minds of the NHL Network, so you'll have to settle for the NHL Center Ice free preview.
Rogers Sportsnet will have a rare Blue Jackets sighting in Ottawa Saturday. Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360 will simulcast the Wednesday doubleheader with the Battle of Ontario early and Alex Ovechkin and his Capitals traveling to Edmonton late.
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NHL Network
Saturday
Toronto @ Detroit, 7p
Thursday
Vancouver @ St. Louis, 8p
Tape delayed
Friday Boston @ Montréal, 2p (1-hour)
Sunday Colorado @ Montréal, 1p
Tuesday Tampa Bay @ Edmonton, 3p
Thursday Toronto @ Ottawa, 4p (1-hour)
CBC
Saturday
Toronto @ Detroit, 7p
Tampa Bay @ Vancouver, 10p
City
Saturday
Colorado @ Montréal, 7p
Sunday
Calgary @ Winnipeg, 7p
Rogers Sportsnet
Saturday
Columbus @ Ottawa, 7p
Rogers Sportsnet One
Wednesday
Toronto @ Ottawa, 7p
Washington @ Edmonton, 9:30p*
NHL Center Ice
Friday
Calgary @ Columbus, 7p
Detroit @ Toronto, 7:30p
Nashville @ Winnipeg, 8p
Vancouver @ Edmonton, 9:30p
Saturday
Toronto @ Detroit, 7p
Colorado @ Montréal, 7p
Columbus @ Ottawa, 7p
Tampa Bay @ Vancouver, 10p
Sunday
Calgary @ Winnipeg, 7p
Monday
Tampa Bay @ Edmonton, 9:30p
Tuesday
Toronto @ NY Islanders, 7p
Detroit @ Montréal, 7:30p
Carolina @ Winnipeg, 8p
Vancouver @ Dallas, 8:30p
Tampa Bay @ Calgary, 9p
Wednesday
Toronto @ Ottawa, 7p
Washington @ Edmonton, 9:30p
Thursday
Vancouver @ St. Louis, 8p
Carolina @ Calgary, 9p
* simulcast on Rogers Sportsnet 360
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The regular #1 team will be at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit on CBC. Glenn Healy will be between the benches in Detroit. Christine Simpson will be the reporter on that game.
Paul Romanuk, Mike Johnson, and Scott Oake will be the City TV crew this week Saturday night in Montréal and Sunday night in Winnipeg. As patterns go, this is 2-for-2 for the same crew at both City TV games.
Bob Cole and Greg Millen work another Ottawa game, this time hosting Columbus with David Amber on the Rogers Sportsnet regional channels.
Dave Randorf and Garry Galley reunite again, this time on CBC as Vancouver welcomes Steven Stamkos.
Dave Randorf, Mike Johnson, and Scott Oake worked the Wednesday night game in Chicago against the Flames on Rogers Sportsnet.
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CBC was promised a chance to promote its lineup in lieu of actually making money on Hockey Night in Canada telecasts. We saw a few promos, on-air during the telecasts and during the breaks, for "Canada's Smartest Person." Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes also had their share of attention. "Dragon's Den" and "Republic of Doyle" picked up promos later.
Running promos in between periods won't get as many eyeballs as promos during the period.
Didn't have access to CBC spots in commercial breaks during the first game, but we saw a lot more on-air promos in the late game (with a much smaller audience). The first on-air promo in the first game came just before the 2nd period.
You can definitely argue that CBC is getting a stronger audience with the NHL than without. With minimal promos and no ad revenue — local and national — for 7 hours a week, the CBC is getting a raw deal.
The opening night ratings were down in great part because CBC is in a lot more homes than the Sportsnet channels. Rogers needs CBC more and the CBC should use that advantage to make some coin.
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The Saturday numbers pointed to a lot of love for the CBC but not the Rogers-owned outlets.
For those who say HNIC is too Leafs-centric, the Leafs game drew 1.57 million on CBC. The Canadiens drew 1.2 million combined on City/TVA. The early numbers drop considerably from there: 130,000 for the Senators on Sportsnet One and 112,000 for the Flames on Sportsnet 360. As for the all-U.S. tilt, a whopping 15,000 for Washington-Boston on FX Canada.
The late game numbers showed a huge discrepancy from the CBC to Sportsnet 360. 1.22 million for Edmonton-Vancouver vs. 87,000 for the Jets on Sportsnet 360.
The overall numbers were down from last year in whole audience for early (down 14%) and late games (down 10%) as well as French TV (down 22%).
Rogers will argue, and perhaps rightly so, that more awareness needs to be built so NHL fans can find their favorite team on Saturday nights. The Senators, Flames, and Jets numbers are surprisingly low, since the regional telecasts would draw higher. Winnipeg fans would have had to stay up to almost midnight for the end of a bad Jets loss, and the Flames played at suppertime in southern Alberta.
Let's see how these numbers look in a couple of months.
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The 2nd game intermissions were often underwhelming in the CBC days. Always hard to maintain for the whole night, and yes, the audience is smaller for the late game.
Rogers "Inside the Game" did a decent job in the first intermission. Damien Cox doesn't add much to the telecast. Nick Kypreos and Elliotte Friedman worked together well.
In the 2nd intermission, Strombo did an interview with Mark Messier that honestly could have taped early in the evening. Kypreos, Friedman, and Cox broke down elements of both late games. Most weeks will only have one late game.
This was better than the lame CBC Scoreboard Sunday. Rogers runs Hockey Central so eventually fans can see highlights.
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We got to see Thursday Night Hockey via the NHL Network's coverage of Sportsnet 360 of the Bruins at the Bell Centre.
U.S. viewers rarely get a local Montréal Canadiens feed on the NHL Network in years past. We got the new announcers — John Bartlett and Jason York — as well as full intermission coverage. Jeff Marek does a really nice job and having three works a lot better than 5, especially with Elliotte Friedman and Marek are 2 of the 3.
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If you want to skip past everything and just get to Coach's Corner each week, here is the URL via Sportsnet.ca. The NHL Network won't carry a HNIC game every week, so this is a good option to remember.
I can't find a way on my Sportsnet app to watch Coach's Corner like we could with the CBC Hockey app last season. If you know where you can watch via an app, please let us know.
The channel showed the Budwesier spot for Coach's Corner as well as the Home Hardware spot for the Up to the Minute segment. Heck, Budweiser is also sold in the U.S. (sarcasm noted) and as for Home Hardware, keep the U.S. fans guessing.
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Regardless of politics, good to see George Stroumboulopoulos interview Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The prime minister is a major hockey fan.
Harper admitted to rooting for Toronto in the East and Calgary in the West. He is from the Toronto area and represents Calgary Southwest in Parliament.
We also saw Harper's jersey room. Strombo was quick to point out that the room didn't have any special construction.
24 Sussex Drive is the home of the prime minister for as long as that person serves in the role. Harper hopes that will be beyond 2015. The other party leaders hope one of them will move in next year.
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NHL Center Ice took away the Monday Habs telecast. The game was still there, but the City Montréal telecast disappeared.
Rogers Sportsnet East couldn't carry the game due to baseball playoffs, which subsequently got rained out.
The game against Tampa Bay wasn't great, but was curious with the idea of a local OTA feed from Canada. 2 more games will air on CJNT Montréal this season.
In the original schedule, Rogers Sportsnet East wasn't scheduled to carry the game tape-delayed after the baseball game. U.S. TV viewers who live in a NHL city are used to seeing overnight and next afternoon rebroadcasts of games. That doesn't seem to be the case in Canada. Perhaps rights are set up differently.
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NHL Center Ice gave us a chance to see the emptiness in Sunrise, Florida as the Panthers hosted the Ottawa Senators. The "announced" attendance was 7,311, even for Florida, a new low. If someone sneezed 3 sections away, you could bless them and everyone could hear both of you. Gord Miller and Jamie McLennan were very gracious in assessing why Florida was drawing so poorly.
In any other sport with any other commissioner, the Panthers would be someplace such as Quebec City. As Miller noted, Quebec City is getting a new arena opening in fall 2015.
Move Florida to Quebec City, stay in the same division. Put Canada back to 8 teams.
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We don't plan to spend much time talking about FX Canada, but Bell Fibe and Bell Satellite TV customers finally have access to the Rogers-owned channel in time for the NHL season.
FX Canada will show U.S. based games as part of the Hockey Night in Canada package, but be little more than running a U.S. feed.
The viewers of the channel do get the same intermissions as the rest of the channels in Canada.
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In the rebroadcasts, NHL Network used Canadian feeds for the HNIC game from Saturday and City TV game from Sunday.
The U.S. feeds were used for the Habs in Tampa Bay Tuesday afternoon — as we noted, the Canadian feed disappeared from NHL Center Ice. We got Gord Miller and Ray Ferraro and the TSN4 feed for the Wednesday rebroadcast of the Avalanche in Toronto.
We don't know which feed the NHL Network used for Thursday's rebroadcast of the Sportsnet Flames telecast. If you know, let us know.
The Toronto-Ottawa game on Wednesday night has been postponed due to the shooting in and around Parliament Wednesday morning. Schedule has been updated to reflect this.
Posted by: Chad | October 22, 2014 at 01:13 PM
Looks like Sportsnet is picking up the NBCSN feed of Flyers-Penguins to air on SN360 at 8 pm ET. (Hockey Central to fill the 7-8 pm hour.) Capitals-Oilers at 9:30 pm ET on SN1 and joined in progress on 360 after Flyers-Penguins.
Posted by: Tyler | October 22, 2014 at 05:08 PM
Thanks for the update, Tyler. Glad that Sportsnet audience got to see O Canada from Pittsburgh. Loved that CBC News also carried the anthem.
NHL Network substituted Sportsnet feed of Edmonton game in the rebroadcast slot originally scheduled for the Battle of Ontario.
Posted by: Chad | October 23, 2014 at 08:36 PM