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Edmonton Journal
a day ago
- Sport
- Edmonton Journal
Canadian TV ratings surge after thrilling start to Oilers-Panthers Stanley Cup final
Article content Combined, the two opening games mark a healthy increase of 14% over the 2024 Cup final contested between the same two teams. Of note, those two big numbers came despite the ridiculous schedule for the final, one that had almost a week off between rounds to dull momentum. As well, with games played on Wednesday and Friday, the opening salvos for a repeat of last year's combatants was without the ratings bonanza slot of Hockey Night In Canada 's traditional Saturday night home. Making up for it, of course, was the wildly entertaining action of both games, with lead changes and plenty of scoring from both teams. As usual, the NHL will mercilessly drag out the schedule with two off days between Game 2 and Monday's Game 3 and another two days of before Thursday's Game 4. Meanwhile, the big Canadian audiences are in sharp contrast to what is happening with TNT south of the border. According to reports, the Game 1 audience in the U.S. was just 2.42 million viewers, a plunge of 22% from last year and the lowest Game 1 rating for the final (not including the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021 versions) since 2008. A year ago, with all seven games on ABC — which offers much better reach — an average of 4.17 viewers tuned in over the seven games.
National Post
11-05-2025
- Sport
- National Post
What unites Maple Leafs fans despite decades of losing?
Article content Whether suffering from blue-and-white disease or not, the Maple Leafs fan base is undeniably among the most passionate and loyal in the National Hockey League. Article content Article content Whether the Buds win or lose in their playoff series against the Florida Panthers, Leafs Nation will likely forever remain intact. Article content Article content The longevity of the storied franchise, which has won 13 Stanley Cup championships but precisely zero since 1967, can't hurt for starters. Article content So says Craig Hyatt, associate professor of sport management at Brock University in St. Catharines. Article content 'The Leafs have been around for over 100 years, with a loyal fan base that is transferred from generation to generation,' Hyatt said in a wide-ranging synopsis of the franchise ahead of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs. 'For many families in English-speaking Canada, specifically southern Ontario, Leafs fandom is a family legacy passed down like a family heirloom.' Article content For instance, families might bond over watching the Leafs take the ice during the weekly Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, Hyatt said. Article content 'You learn all the rituals, traditions and stories — the Legend of Bill Barilko or of Darryl Sittler scoring 10 points in one game — that get passed onto the next generation of fans,' the resident expert said. 'If mom and dad cheer for the Leafs, you cheer for the Leafs and breaking that cycle would almost be like betraying your family.' Article content The Leafs have long asked their fans to be patient. Playoff success has been next to non-existent in recent years, or more accurately decades. In fact, when the Leafs ousted their Battle of Ontario rival Ottawa Senators in Round 1, it marked just the second time since 2004 that Toronto has advanced to the second round. Article content Article content Article content But as Bob Dylan once sang, the times, they just might be a-changin'. After winning the Atlantic Division title by finishing the regular season with 108 points, the Leafs find themselves in contention in 2025 as they aim to erase the longest active Cup drought among NHL teams. Article content 'Because they were so awful for so long, they got high draft picks with the goal of developing those players into superstars to become a contending team,' Hyatt said. 'There is now a lot of excitement in southern Ontario as Leafs Nation thinks their dreams are finally going to come true.' Article content Hyatt's colleague at Brock, fellow associate professor of sport management, Olan Scott, said casual and new fans alike have joined the fray, for various reasons. Article content 'A bandwagoner is often disparaged as someone only being a fan when things are good, but it's also just fun to have something to talk about with friends,' Scott said. 'Sports are like a social glue that brings people together. Following the game and the progression of the series, for a moment, takes the focus off some of the other geopolitical things happening in the world. It's a reprieve for people who watch and enjoy it together.'
Hamilton Spectator
26-04-2025
- Sport
- Hamilton Spectator
Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Ottawa Senators: How to watch Game 4 as Leafs go for sweep
A feeling of pure elation is shared among Leafs Nation as the boys in blue have now taken a commanding 3-0 series lead against the Ottawa Senators in the epic Battle of Ontario. After a thrilling overtime winner by hometown favourite Max Domi in Game 2, an unlikely hero emerged in clutch fashion once again, as the Maple Leafs put the clamps down at the Canadian Tire Centre in Game 3 on April 24. A post shared by Sportsnet (@sportsnet) It was a bit of a different script this time around, as the Maple Leafs faced their first taste of adversity, going down 1-0 early in the second period after weathering the Senators storm in the first. The top power play in the Stanley Cup playoffs thus far struck again, however, as Matthew Knies put away the game-tying goal shortly after. A post shared by Toronto Maple Leafs (@mapleleafs) With not a whole lot of ice to navigate in a tight checking affair, Mitch Marner pulled a trick out of his hat with a magic touch pass to captain Auston Matthews early in the third that would break the deadlock, giving the Maple Leafs their first lead in Game 3. A post shared by Sportsnet (@sportsnet) After a nearly flawless third period by the Maple Leafs in an effort to close out the game, Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk got the home fans believing again at the Canadian Tire Centre after tying the game midway through the third period and sending the game into overtime. The Maple Leafs had other plans, however, as just over a minute into the extra frame, Simon Benoit wired a slapshot off of an Auston Matthews faceoff win right past Linus Ullmark that would silence the amped-up crowd. A post shared by Sportsnet (@sportsnet) The Ottawa Senators are now on the brink of elimination, with Leafs fans already envisioning bringing out the brooms ahead of a pivotal Game 4 showdown on Saturday, April 26. Leafs Nation established their presence on the road at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa for Game 3, and in a potential elimination game, they'll undoubtedly be looking to do the same for Game 4. It will come at a hefty price though, as the cheapest tickets on Ticketmaster currently sit at $375 per seat. If you're looking to make some noise down in the lower bowl, tickets range from $1,255 to $2,440. For those looking to make the trip this weekend, driving may be the more economical option, as the cheapest flight from Toronto to Ottawa prior to Game 4 is listed at $942. If you're looking to just watch at home, the big game will be broadcast on CBC for Hockey Night In Canada, along with Sportsnet, with a 7 p.m. puck drop. Sunday, April 20 at 7 p.m. in Toronto (Maple Leafs win 6-2) Tuesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Toronto (Maple Leafs win 3-2) Thursday, April 24 at 7 p.m. in Ottawa (Maple Leafs win 3-2) Saturday, April 26 at 7 p.m. in Ottawa Tuesday, April 29 TBD in Toronto (if necessary) Thursday, May 1 TBD in Ottawa (if necessary) Saturday, May 3 TBD in Toronto (if necessary)
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Canucks: What's the most iconic play-by-play call in team history?
If play-by-play calls of Greg Adams' goal that sent the Vancouver Canucks to the 1994 Stanley Cup Final and Kevin Bieksa's goal in 2011 that did the same for the team sound similar, it's completely intentional. Jim Hughson was calling the action for Hockey Night In Canada on the evening that a puck ricocheted wildly off a stanchion on the sideboards to Bieksa at the blue line and Bieksa knuckle-balled it past a gaggle of bewildered San Jose Sharks for the winner in a 3-2 double overtime victory that clinched Vancouver the Western Conference title. Hughson is from Fort St. John. He grew up with Jim Robson as the voice of the Canucks. Robson was one of the people Hughson studied as a young broadcaster. Ask Hughson to name the most iconic play-by-play call in Canucks history and he points to Robson's detailing of Adams' goal in double OT that gave Vancouver a 4-3 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs and clinched them the Western Conference banner. Hughson liked the call so much, in fact, that he admits 'I tried to imitate that,' on the Bieksa goal that came 17 years later. He pegs it simply as a 'direct imitation of Robson.' Adams backhanded a rebound past Felix Potvin in the Toronto net and Robson described it as 'Adams shoots … scores … Greg Adams, Greg Adams … Adams gets the winner 14 seconds into the second overtime … the Vancouver Canucks are going to the Stanley Cup Final.' Hughson used the identical final 10-word phrase to end off his Bieksa call, but it was the mood and emotion that he was trying to mimic most of all. Playing that deep into the spring is rare territory for the Canucks. Those two goals clinched two of the club's three trips to the Cup Finals in its 55-year history. 'It had a couple of different qualities,' Hughson, 68, said of the Adams' call. 'It was a great, exciting call. It was double overtime. And it meant so much to the franchise. 'But it also had this incredulity about it, this, 'Can you believe it that the Vancouver Canucks could actually go to the Stanley Cup Final?' ' Don Taylor (host of CHEK's Donnie and Dhali — The Team); John Shorthouse (Canucks TV play by play); Brendan Batchelor (Canucks radio play by play); and Dave Randorf (Tampa Bay Lightning TV play by play) all grew up in the Lower Mainland, all grew up following the Canucks. We asked them for their picks of the most iconic play-by-play call in Canucks history. Shorthouse and Taylor both went with the Adams' goal, while Batchelor and Randorf selected the final moments of Game 6 of the Cup Final from that year against the New York Rangers, when a wounded and weary Trevor Linden was coming off the ice at the end of a shift in what would become a 4-1 Vancouver victory to force Game 7 back in New York. Robson described it as: 'We hope they can patch Linden up and get him into that one. He will play. You know he'll play. He'll play on crutches. He will play and he'll play at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night. 'It's the way he built that moment and did it with just a few sentences and basically gave every Canuck fan exactly what they were feeling at the time: this isn't over tonight and we're going to keep on going with the greatest ride we've ever seen with this franchise,' explained Randorf, 57, who was born in Toronto but grew up in North Delta. 'It's a pattern that I use to this day, that building up the end of a game. Whether it's the regular season or a playoff, you're trying to emphasis the accomplishment, the win, the night that one player has had. Use a couple of sentences and just time it out as the horn sounds and let the crowd take over from there. It's something I have completely ripped off from Jim Robson. 'I loved it (the Linden call) when I first heard it. It sends chills down your spine. All the moments aren't that big, of course. That was a very big one. But it's still a pattern that I've copied for when the moment is right.' There have other been signature moments. There was the run to the 2011 Cup Final, which brought us Shorthouse's 'they've slayed the dragon,' as Vancouver ousted a Chicago Blackhawks' team in the first round that ended their playoffs the two years previous with a 2-1 OT Game 7 win on an Alex Burrows' marker. The Robson calls have had staying power, though. Batchelor posted on social media recently about team captain and top defenceman Quinn Hughes returning to the lineup from injury and got replies quoting the Robson line. So much old footage making its way to things like YouTube has a part in that. 'My personal favourite call is, 'Greg Adams, Greg Adams', but the most iconic call is the, 'He'll play. You know he'll play.' It's remained part of the lexicon for Canuck fans,' said Batchelor, 36, who's originally from Coquitlam. 'For me, what made Jim so special was his ability to convey the emotion of a moment without necessarily having to provide an overly detailed description. It was all in his tone. It was all in the way he would call a goal or the way in that moment he was like, 'He'll play. You know he'll play.' He perfectly encapsulated the emotions of the fan base in the way he delivered that line. 'I don't think there's ever been anyone in hockey broadcasting who's been able to take moments like that and amplify them to such a great degree and did it by complimenting the emotion of the moment without taking over the moment.' Batchelor and the others did have some of these answers on top-of-mind since the Canucks interviewed them for a tribute to Robson on his 90th birthday in January. Robson lives in Vancouver, and you'll see him at the odd Canucks game or from time-to-time at Nat Bailey Stadium watching the Vancouver Canadians. He picks apart both the Adams and Linden calls. That is very much on-brand. He's notoriously humble. Robson maintains that 'every time I hear the Linden call I wish I had finished it off with, 'He will play for the Stanley Cup.' ' And the Adams call had 'too many Adams in it.' Press him for memorable calls, and he'll give you some. There's the Rosaire Paiement game-winner in a 5-4 triumph over the powerhouse Boston Bruins in the Canucks' 1970-71 inaugural season. There's Jim Nill's OT winner in a 2-1 win over the Blackhawks in the opening game of the 1982 Clarence Campbell Conference final. There's the Bob Nystrom OT winner in a 5-4 victory for the New York Islanders over the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 6 of the 1980 Cup Final that cinched the first of four straight championships for the Islanders. Robson was tapped by Hockey Night to do that series. He also cites Wayne Gretzky scoring his 802nd career goal for the Los Angeles Kings versus the Canucks in March 1994. That broke Gordie Howe's all-time record. Robson called that action on BCTV and offered up a 'there it is … No. 802,' before letting the fan reaction and the video take over the story. Ask Robson about hockey play-by-play in general, and he readily brings up that he thinks Hughson was the best ever 'but was not appreciated in the east.' 'I've always said that Foster Hewitt was the first, Danny Gallivan the most-loved, Bob Cole the best voice, but it's Jim Hughson who's my choice as the very best,' he continued. Robson called Canucks games on TV until 1999 but retired from the radio in 1994 and was succeeded by Hughson. Hughson told The Vancouver Sun then that 'Jim Robson has made this job a very prestigious one.' He was Robson's backup for a time before that, and admits that Robson was always 'open to having you just look over his shoulder and watch and listen.' Hughson would, of course, eventually move onto national broadcasts. He retired in September 2021 and lives in White Rock. It's all part of this market's remarkable run of play-by-play voices. That includes Kelowna's Rick Ball, who is handling Blackhawks games on TV. Robson set the table. Along the way, he received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992 and was inducted into the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame in 1998 and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. 'With all due to respect to everybody else, because they're all friends, but I grew up with Jim Robson and I don't think he just set the standard in Vancouver but also across the country and across all of hockey,' said Taylor, 65, who's a Burnaby native. 'It was just something about his voice. It was just amazing. He made you feel like everything was so important and fun and exciting. I just loved his voice.' Hughson added: 'I think the bar was set pretty high by Jim and all of us had to work hard to try to reach that level.' Shorthouse, 55, is from Vancouver. The Canucks have had their eras where they've struggled mightily. That included during Shorthouse's adolescence. There was a time, as a kid, that Shorthouse felt Robson was the 'best part of the team,' and he remembers being excited when Robson would get a national assignment for the playoffs because 'he was getting recognized for how good he was outside of our market, where we already knew how good he was.' 'When you turned on a Canuck game and Jim was calling it, you knew it would be concise, it would be accurate and it would be fair, and you could tell how the Canucks were doing just by the sound of his voice,' said Shorthouse, who, like Taylor and Randorf, is an alum of the Sports Page TV show as well. 'It wasn't just the words. It was also the tone. 'That was one of the things that made him so special — just the number of gears he could go to with his voice. Some guys have one gear or two. You're either really low or screaming, or you're always screaming. Jim could go from here to here to here to here to here, depending on the gravity of the moment or the excitement of the game, or the importance of the game. He had so many different gears he could go to.' Greg Douglas was the Canucks' media relations director for their first seven seasons, so he has a long history with Robson. He recalls the Canucks playing the California Golden Seals on the road in that inaugural season. Charlie Finley owned the Golden Seals and was in the building. Finley was high-profile, through his ownership of baseball's Oakland Athletics. Douglas offered to try to get Finley to be an intermission guest. Robson told Douglas that would never happen. Douglas managed to bring him on with Robson for the first-period break. According to Douglas, things went so well that Finley offered to come back for the second-period intermission, too, and 'hundreds of Jim's guests over the years shared the same sentiments.' He has that kind of affect on people. Always. 'Jim Robson never changed during a Hall of Fame career that saw him broadcast over 2,000 NHL games on television and radio between 1970 and his retirement in 1999,' Douglas explained. SEwen@ Canucks alumni: Greg Adams on that 1994 goal, Jim Robson's call and a confident dressing room Canucks Coffee: Brutal, unpenalized hit on Filip Chytil is bad look for NHL Utah 3, Canucks 1: Power play outage miffs Vancouver coaches
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Could The Schenn Brothers Be Reunited Ahead Of The NHL Trade Deadline?
However, Brayden and Luke Schenn experienced that before with the Philadelphia Flyers, and they could be teammates again before the March 7 trade deadline. During Sportsnet's "Saturday Headlines" segment with Elliotte Friedman on Hockey Night In Canada, the insider reported that teams are discussing uniting the Schenn brothers. HNIC Saturday Headlines: Carolina has made a big offer to Rantanen, he needs time to decide. Brayden Schenn has not been approached about a trade. Teams looking to try acquire both Schenn brothers. Seth Jones has asked for a trade preferably to a contender. #RaiseUp #stlblues… — NHL Trade Alert (@NHLTradeAlert) February 23, 2025 Both players have separately been in trade talks and rumors throughout this season. Nonetheless, this is the first time rumblings have emerged about the brothers being traded to the same team. Friedman added that the St. Louis Blues haven't approached Brayden about any potential trades, and he later credited The Hockey News' Lou Korac with the initial report that the 33-year-old hasn't been asked to waive his no-trade clause. After this season, Brayden will have a 15-team no-trade list instead of a full no-trade clause. Also, he'll have three more years remaining on his contract while earning $6.5 million against the salary cap. There are several sets of brothers in the NHL, and except for Jack and Luke Hughes, siblings do not often become teammates. Nashville Predators defenseman Luke Schenn earns $2.75 million per season and is in the second year of his three-year contract. Next year, he will become a pending UFA. The Saskatoon natives shared parts of four seasons with the Flyers from 2012-2016 before Luke was traded to the Los Angeles Kings. Since then, Luke has played for seven different teams, including two different stints with the Vancouver Canucks and back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021. As for Brayden, he would play one more season with the Flyers after his brother's departure before being traded to the Blues in June 2017. The center is in his eighth season with St. Louis and captained them for the last two campaigns. The Blues captain has scored 11 goals and has 32 points this season in 57 appearances. In St. Louis' last outing in a shootout loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday, Brayden had 19:32 of ice time, the most he's played since Jan. 18, when he clocked 20:11 of ice time against Utah Hockey Club. The Predators blueliner, Luke, has one goal and four assists in 55 games. He picked up his fourth helper of the season in Saturday's win against the Colorado Avalanche with a primary assist on the game-winning goal from Jonathan Marchessault. He was awarded the third star of the game for his performance. Get the latest news and trending stories by following The Hockey News on Google News and by subscribing to The Hockey News newsletter here. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on
