page_title: National Hockey League on television
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: National Hockey League on television / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Mike Emrick, NBC Sports Hockey play-by-play announcer
context_page_description: The National Hockey League is shown on national television in the United States and Canada. With 24 teams in the U.S. and 7 in Canada, the NHL is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada that maintains separate national broadcasters in each country, each producing separate telecasts of a slate of regular season games, playoff games, and all seven games of the Stanley Cup Finals.
  National broadcasting rights in Canada have historically included the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, a long-standing Canadian tradition dating to 1952. Since the 2014–15 season, Rogers Sportsnet has held the Canadian national contract, sub-licensing a slate of games to CBC, and sub-licensing the national French-language rights to TVA Sports.
  Historically, the NHL has never held a long-term exclusive deal with a U.S. national broadcast network prior to 1995. NBC Sports have held the U.S. national rights since the 2005–06 season, airing games on the NBC broadcast network, the cable channel NBCSN, and select playoff games on other NBCUniversal channels.
  The NHL is also shown on multiple regional sports networks in both countries.
context_section_description: The league's American broadcast partners have been in flux for decades, airing on networks such as CBS, SportsChannel America, the USA Network, Fox, ABC, ESPN and NBC. Hockey broadcasting on a national scale was spotty prior to 1981; NBC and CBS held rights at various times during that period, with each network carrying weekend-afternoon games during the second half of the regular season and the playoffs, along with some (but not all) of the Stanley Cup Finals. From 1971 to 1995, there was no exclusive coverage of games.
  National U.S. television rights are currently held by NBC Sports; its current 10-year, US$2 billion contract, which began in the 2011–12 season, extended and unified rights deals that were first established in the 2005–06 season, when Comcast (through OLN, later Versus) acquired cable rights to replace ESPN, and NBC acquired broadcast television rights under a revenue-sharing agreement to replace ABC. Following the acquisition of parent company NBCUniversal by Comcast, Versus was re-branded as NBC Sports Network, and the company negotiated a new, 10-year, unified rights deal worth nearly US$2 billion. Under this contract, NBCSN usually airs at least two regular season games per week, while NBC airs afternoon games on selected weekends. NBCUniversal holds exclusive rights to Wednesday night games, all games televised by the NBC network, and every game in the Stanley Cup playoffs beginning in the second round. Coverage of the playoffs and the Finals is split between the two networks, with other games shown on CNBC, USA Network, and NHL Network.
  As in Canada, games not broadcast nationally are aired regionally within a team's home market,  and are subject to blackout outside of them. These broadcasters include regional sports network chains such as Fox Sports Networks, MSG Network, NBC Sports Regional Networks, and AT&T SportsNet. Certain national telecasts on NBCSN, such as non-Wednesday regular season games and first round playoff games, are non-exclusive, and may also air in tandem with telecasts of the game by local broadcasters. However, national telecasts of these games are blacked out in the participating teams' markets to protect the local broadcaster.
  Only a handful of regular season games, including the outdoor games, may be broadcast nationally in both countries. A Saturday night Bruins–Canadiens game, for example, would typically air on Hockey Night in Canada across that country but only regionally south of the border in the Boston area. Likewise, a Tuesday night Bruins–Canadiens game may air across the U.S. on NBCSN but only regionally north of the border in the Montreal area.
  XM Satellite Radio is the official satellite radio broadcaster of the NHL, as of July 1, 2007. Between September 2005 and June 2007, the NHL's broadcasting rights were shared with both XM and Sirius Satellite Radio and were broadcast on just Sirius before the NHL lockout. XM used to broadcast more than 80% of NHL games, including all the playoffs and finals. Starting with the 2007–08 season, XM broadcasts every game.
  The league used to operate an NHL Radio network, through Westwood One, that carried high-profile contests such as the Stanley Cup Finals to stations across the United States. From 2009 to 2015, the league did not have national radio broadcasts, relying only on local broadcast teams. NHL Radio resumed during the 2016 playoffs through NBC Sports Radio.
caption: Mike "Doc" Emrick, NBC Sports' lead hockey play-by-play announcer, 2014
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