I’m leaving: Connor McDavid . shock people with immediate departure today after he claimed his first victory at the Edmonton Oilers….
Like just about 98% of everything else in the known universe, the 2024 Stanley Cup Final is a win some, lose some proposition. On the one hand, the NHL finally has the opportunity to showcase the human highlight reel that is Connor McDavid, who, alongside Leon Draisaitl, powers a belief-beggaring Edmonton Oilers offense. On the other, even with McDavid suiting up for his first crack at Lord Stanley’s beer stein, ABC’s coverage isn’t likely to draw a TV audience commensurate with the generational talent that’ll be on display.
Bad news first. While the NHL has been on a torrid ratings tear—to date, postseason deliveries on the ESPN networks are up 20% year-over-year—that momentum is about to zoom headlong into the stark reality of marketplace mathematics. If ABC couldn’t catch a break from the New York area (Florida’s undoing of the Rangers cast a pall over much of the market’s 7.6 million TV homes), it took another hit when the Oilers pummeled their way past the Dallas Stars.
It doesn’t happen all that often, but whenever a Canadian team punches its ticket to the Final, the subsequent absence of a crucial hometown DMA is readily apparent in the Nielsen data. In 2021, the five-game Montreal Canadiens-Tampa Bay Lightning series averaged just shy of 2.5 million viewers per game across NBC’s various broadcast, cable and digital platforms. Our neighbors to the north also played a part in the least-watched Final on record, as 2007’s five-game Anaheim Ducks-Ottawa Senators set averaged just 1.74 million viewers on the NBC flagship and the now-defunct cabler Versus.
Still, not all is lost. If a short series featuring a Canadian club is more or less box-office poison, a Final that’s been pushed to the brink will scare up crowd regardless of local market considerations. In 2011, when Boston repped the Original Six in a seventh frame against Vancouver, 8.54 million viewers watched the action unfold on NBC. The Bruins’ 4-0 victory remains the fifth-biggest TV draw in NHL history, and trails only Game 7 of St. Louis-Boston in 2019 (8.72 million) as the league’s top outing during the modern Nielsen era.
