NHL TV ratings 2013: Local ratings impressive on Hockey Day in America

[doniceage]

The NHL on NBC drew pretty good ratings for Hockey Day in America, so it shouldn't surprise most of you that local markets had much to do with it, particularly in the early Penguins vs. Sabres game.

For that one, we saw the typically gigantic ratings those cities are now almost accustomed to. In Pittsburgh, the Penguins drew a 15.2/29 rating, meaning nearly 30 percent of the televisions in the Steel City and the surrounding areas watched the Penguins game. The Penguins have been scoring insane ratings all season, but the 15.2 falls short of only the Pens opening day win over the Flyers as far as NBC goes. That game drew a 19.4

http://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2013/2/1...day-in-america

[pwaldo]

Hockey scores very high ratings locally in strong hockey markets like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, etc. But outside of hockey cities they do poorly. One of the reasons why I didn't get the shift the NHL did to the south. I could see some markets needing an NHL based on their size but moving teams out of Hartford, Minnesota, etc where hockey was popular to places that never really cared for it seems to have set the sport back a bit in my opinion. The shift of hockey teams out of Canada made a little more sense at the time because of the difference between the US Dollar and Canadian Dollar but that has evaporated which probably adds to the desire to move more hockey teams back out of the sun belt to places in Canada.