from Chris Peters of CBSSports,
Here are the five big things you need to know about the NBC NHL schedule for 2016-17, including how many times each team will be on:
1. Blackhawks will appear a league-high 21 times nationally, Flyers get 20 games
The league's most popular brand in terms of TV viewership, ticket sales and merchandise is unsurprisingly going to get a lot of run on NBC's platforms. On top of playing in their third Winter Classic next season - Jan. 2 against the St. Louis Blues at Busch Stadium - the Blackhawks will have 25 percent of their regular-season schedule visible to a national audience. They are the biggest ratings driver the league has and NBC is going to milk that for all it's worth. This is the same amount of Blackhawks games they ordered for last season....
The Philadelphia Flyers, however, also have an extremely robust national TV schedule. They'll be on 20 times next season.
It should be noted that both Philadelphia and Chicago have all of their non-nationally broadcast games broadcast on regional Comcast Sports Networks, which are under the same umbrella as NBC Sports. That allows NBC to pull their feeds without having to send a full broadcast crew to those games.
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