The NHL season got off to a much stronger start than a year ago.
Tuesday’s NHL Opening Night tripleheader averaged 768,000 viewers on ESPN, up 37% from last year (559K). Penguins-Rangers led the way with 1.09 million, up 38% from a non-exclusive Bruins-Panthers game last year (790K) and behind only Blackhawks-Penguins two years ago — Connor Bedard’s NHL debut (1.43M) — as second-most watched NHL Opening Night game ever on cable.
Between Nielsen’s February expansion of out-of-home viewing and September rollout of “Big Data + Panel” — which adds data from smart TVs and set-top boxes to the traditional Nielsen panel — this year’s numbers will generally have an advantage over past years. But that would not fully account for increases of such magnitude.
It should be noted that coverage of last year’s Bruins-Panthers game was altered due to a hurricane, causing the ESPN broadcast — which was called remotely — to have to co-exist with local RSN coverage.
As for this year’s Panthers game, defending champion Florida’s matchup with the Blackhawks led in with 743,000 — more-than-double last year’s 348,000 for Blues-Kraken and the most-watched Opening Day matinee since Penguins-Flyers on NBCSN in 2021. The game avoided scheduled competition from the Mariners-Tigers MLB playoff game, which was rain delayed.
The Avalanche-Kings nightcap had 511,000, down from Chicago-Utah last year, which marked the NHL debut of the Utah franchise now known as the Mammoth (522K).