Just In: Canadians Like Hockey More Than Americans

Leitch|published: 10/07/2005, 12:00pm EDT

This image was lost some time after publication.

The first batch of ratings for the NHL's return have come out, and whether the news is good or not depends on, well, how you pronounced the word "about." If you're Canadian, man, did you watch yourself some hockey; 2.1 million Canadians watched Ottawa's win over Toronto, good enough for the third-highest TSN ratings ever. (Strangely, the two highest before that were junior-league championships in 2003 and 2005.) For the doubleheader — the second game was Wayne Gretzky's first game as coach — the network had a total of 6.4 million viewers check in on at least a segment. So that's good.

And then you have the United States. The Outdoor Life Network's first telecast, a Philadelphia-New York Rangers game, was seen in 268,000 households (just barely beating "Quite Frankly," we might add). In Los Angeles? A zero rating. Zero.

Hmm. Wonder what this might mean for the future of hockey ...

NHL Return Scores Record Ratings [Globe And Mail] Short Waves [LA Times] (via BenMaller.com