from Ken Campbell of The Hockey News,
Having no Canadian teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs was expected to have an adverse effect on TV ratings, but even people in the industry are taken aback at how viewers north of the 49th parallel have tuned out this year’s tournament in CBC and Sportsnet.
Through the first five nights of hockey in the playoffs – from last Wednesday (April 13) through Sunday (April 17) – an average of just 513,000 viewers tuned into the 20 NHL playoff games. Compare that to last spring when there were five Canadian teams playing in the first round and an average of 1.306 million viewers tuned into the first 21 first-round games. That’s a drop of 61 percent from last season.
“Even with no Canadian teams, those are shockingly low numbers,” said one industry expert. “There were regular season games on TSN two years ago that did better than that.”
Attempts by thn.com to reach Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet and NHL properties for Rogers, were not successful.
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