I came across a fascinating piece of sports publishing history last week. It touted the sexiness of the National Hockey League and the unappealing nature of the National Basketball Association. The cover for the June 20, 1994, issue of Sports Illustrated:
This was when minor-league baseball player Michael Jordan was plying his trade in Birmingham instead of with the NBA’s Chicago Bulls and the NHL had a riveting postseason that concluded with the Curse of the Rangers being lifted after 54 years. The NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets struggled for viewership until Game 7 and suffered a huge lost audience for Game 5 — the day of the O.J. Simpson Ford Bronco chase.
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Of course, the SI cover was a big oversell, a vibes play more than anything else. As Sports Media Watch noted, Game 7 of the Knicks-Rockets NBA Finals drew a 17.9 U.S. rating on NBC while Game 7 of the Rangers’ Stanley Cup Final win over the Vancouver Canucks drew a 5.2 cable rating on ESPN nationally. That minor-league baseball player also returned to the NBA a year later, and you know what happened next.
Thirty years to the month following that cover the NHL finds itself in a fascinating position — an opportunity to significantly change its viewership landscape for one night. Monday’s Game 7 between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers is one of those rare moments where casual fans who don’t often (or ever) watch hockey might tune in given the circ*mstances: Connor McDavid, the sport’s best player, has a chance to win his first Stanley Cup under remarkable conditions. His Oilers lost the first three games of the series only to roar back and tie things at three games apiece.
Only one NHL team in history has won the Stanley Cup Final after losing the first three games — the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs. Furthermore, no Canadian team has won a Stanley Cup since the 1993 Montreal Canadiens. These are easy storylines a sports fan can relate to, especially those who are not regular hockey watchers. One columnist at The Athletic argued that the Panthers losing would be the worst in NHL history. There’s an easy corollary to suggest an Edmonton win would be the greatest comeback in NHL history — and on the shortlist for the greatest comebacks in major team sports. There have been 17 Game 7s in the Stanley Cup Final in NHL history; none have been like this in any of our lifetimes.
GO DEEPERRanking every Stanley Cup Final in the cap era, and why Oilers-Panthers is already No. 1“A Game 7, regardless of sport, is like hitting the Powerball number,” said Daniel Cohen, the executive vice president of global media rights consulting for the sports agency Octagon. “Game 7s have a unique ability to draw in casual sports fans to a telecast or stream, and I have no doubt non-ice hockey fans will drive up viewership considerably Monday night. All in all, this is a huge win for the league. This game will create new hockey fans, and the league will have plenty to work with in the offseason in terms of retaining new hockey fans.”
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We do have one marker where a Canadian team was part of one of the most-watched Game 7s in the modern Nielsen era. That came in 2011 when 8.54 million viewers tuned in for the Boston Bruins’ 4-0 victory over the Canucks. The NHL has only had two games top eight million viewers since 2015 — Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final between the St. Louis Blues and Bruins (8.91 million viewers including streaming) and Game 6 of the 2015 final between the Chicago Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning (8 million). The Bruins-Blues game is the most-watched NHL game on record dating back to when Nielsen adjusted its measurement in 1994. Sports Business Journal has the Canadiens-Blackhawks Game 7 in 1971 at 12.41 million viewers on CBS, though data is very shaky from that time.
So far, the Stanley Cup Final is up big over last year but down from 2022. The Oilers-Panthers series has averaged 3.6 million viewers, up 36 percent versus last year’s five-game final between the Las Vegas Golden Knights and Florida, which aired on TNT, TBS and truTV. Last year’s viewership was a dud, down 43 percent in viewership from the six-game series between the Colorado Avalanche and Lightning on ABC in 2022. The length and cable-only broadcast of last year’s series were factors. Game 6 this year between the Panthers-Oilers Game 6 averaged 4.2 million total viewers on ABC and peaked at 4.9 million. It was the most-watched game of the series.
Arguably the biggest thing Edmonton-Florida has going for it on Monday night is that each of this year’s Stanley Cup Final games has been available on ABC, ESPN+ and ESPN Deportes. Network television makes a difference. ABC reaches approximately 12.5 million more homes than Warner Bros. Discovery’s offerings. While there is some national sports competition — NBC is airing the 2024 U.S. Olympic track and field trials, ESPN has Game 3 of the College World Series, and FS1 has Brazil-Costa Rica in Copa América — none of it has the compelling story of the winner-take-all hockey game.
Cohen pointed out some things that are working against the Game 7. The game will be played on Monday versus a Sunday night and the average Households Using Television (HUT) is down double digits since the last Game 7 in 2019 — and down 6.9 percent year over year in the U.S. The NFL is the only sport that seems immune to such things.
If Edmonton can pull this off, the NHL will have an all-time postseason to sell heading forward given its most gilded star will have accomplished a comeback no one has seen in the sport in modern times. That could pay off for years because you would gain some incremental growth from an American audience who will be McDavid-curious when he appears on U.S. television.
The dream scenario for the sport unless you are a diehard Panthers fan? McDavid scores in overtime to win it, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern.
GO DEEPERLeBrun: As Oilers claw back into Stanley Cup Final, the world witnesses NHL history(Top photo of the Oilers’ Adam Henrique and Connor McDavid celebrating during Game 6: Jeff Vinnick / Getty Images)
Richard Deitsch is a media reporter for The Athletic. He previously worked for 20 years for Sports Illustrated, where he covered seven Olympic Games, multiple NCAA championships and U.S. Open tennis. Richard also hosts a weekly sports media podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddeitsch
