Can the Montreal Canadiens ride a plucky rookie goalie all the way to the Stanley Cup final? First, Jakub Dobeš and his teammates will have to get past their NHL Eastern Conference Final opponent, the Carolina Hurricanes. Puck drops Thursday night at 8pm on CBC, Sportsnet and TVA and on TNT and truTV in the States.
Sportsnet owner Rogers Sports and Media are hoping the Habs will again prevail, and they are fine if it takes six or seven games to get there. The deeper the sole Canadian team can go in the Stanley Cup tournament, the more ad revenue for the Canadian media company.
Montreal’s Game 7 win against the Buffalo Sabres in round two demonstrates how much Canadian hockey fans have rallied around this tourney’s Team Canada. The Monday, May 18 numbers, according to overnight estimates, bear this out. The 2+ Average Minute Audience was as follows
- CBC Total 1,937,000
- Sportsnet National 1,358,000
Add that 3.3 million tally to the audience watching the same game on French language carrier TVA (approx 1 million to 1.8 million) and the game probably drew close to five million viewers on CBC and sports specialty channels across Canada.
That still left an estimated, overnight audience of 878,000 Sportsnet One+ viewers who watched the Toronto Blue Jays lose a close series opener against the New York Yankees.
Here is how the Habs-Sabres previous two games in the series did, ratings-wise:
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SATURDAY MAY 16
Game Six between the Sabres and the Habs, played in Montreal, was a setback for the hometown team but not for Rogers. An overnight, estimated 1,603,000 watched on CBC while a further 1,510,000 watched on Sportsnet National, adding up to over 3.1 million. A further million plus watched on TVA. The game was also shown on City, where 201,000 saw Buffalo extend the series to a seventh game.
There was plenty of other sports action on Saturday. In the afternoon, the 3rd round of the PGA Championship chipped in an AMA audience of 212,000 on TSN. That’s where 175,000 viewers found a Hockey World Championship between Holland and Finland, and a PWHL final between Ottawa and Montreal drew 170,000. Over on Rogers’ owned City on Saturday, the Belmont Stakes galloped off with an estimated 126,000 viewers.
THURSDAY MAY 14
Game 5 saw 1,400,000 viewers ages 2+ stick with the 7:11 start between the Sabres and Habs on CBC. Tally for the same game the same night on Sportsnet National was 953,000. Compare that with the slightly more than half a million who caught the Vegas Knights game the same night against the Anaheim Ducks.
Overnight estimates for non-sports programming tells a different story. Old reliable supper hour gamers Jeopardy! (466,000) and Wheel of Fortune (366,000) remain the big draws across Indie/Net stations. Linear broadcaster City counted 521,000 who watched Law & Order Toronto (renewed for a fourth season with a new lead actor–shades of Hudson & Rex). That tally, as with other scripted dramas, would see a big jump in viewers who bank and watch a show two, three and seven days later.
