Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs is supposed to be the NHL at its best. The games are ferocious, the atmosphere swallows you whole, and the big moments will stay with fans forever.
This is the time for the NHL to show off.
Instead, the league and one of its main TV Partners is using this opportunity to cut costs.
TNT, which will be broadcasting the Stanley Cup Final in June, has opted to have its broadcast team remotely call select games in Round 1 of the playoffs.
The folks at Turner, who own TNT, explained to The Athletic that the decision was made because the cost of broadcasting games “particularly in smaller Canadian cities” requires significant financial investment.
The decision has been met with backlash from fans, who are already dealing with consistent audio issues and poor play-by-play from the league’s other rightsholder in the States, ESPN.
ESPN and Turner both paid whopping costs for the rights to broadcast the NHL, so it’s a bit offensive — and pathetic — that the two billion-dollar entities don’t seem to care about the product as much as the audience does.
What’s even more infuriating for fans is the fact that this decision by TNT comes just a few months after the whopping success of the 4 Nations Face-Off in February.
What seemed like a sport-changing event was supposed to be a momentum builder into the playoffs and lead to a ratings bonanza (relatively speaking) for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The opposite has happened.
It’s hard to draw a line from TNT’s decision to why ratings are down, but it does seem pretty clear that the decision-makers at Turner could see this issue coming, hence why they decided to cut the costs of their broadcasts for Round 1.
Through Monday, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are averaging 718,000 viewers across ESPN and TNT Sports — down 27% from last year’s 980K.
— Braylon Breeze (@Braylon_Breeze) April 22, 2025
All nine windows are down year-over-year, with seven of them posting double-digit declines.
No game has yet averaged over a million viewers.
It’s an easily explainable decision. Ratings are down, so the ROI on sending an entire operation to Winnipeg or Edmonton doesn’t make financial sense. Shareholders everywhere applaud.
TNT’s decision to put their bottom line over the fan experience is nothing new in the current landscape of sports media — the Islanders fired their popular radio broadcasters, Chris King and Greg Picker, on Wednesday — but it is especially dreadful when it comes from one of the league’s main rightsholders.
It becomes even more discouraging when you consider all the positive momentum hockey had going into the postseason.