The NHL Playoffs have reached the Stanley Cup stage and things are set to begin on Wednesday night as the Boston Bruins visit the United Center to take on the Chicago Blackhawks for Game 1 and the rest of the series will be broadcast on NBC and the NBC Sports Network.
The two teams are in big media markets and that bodes well for the ratings for NBC, as CHI is the third and BOS is the seventh biggest TV markets and the network is hoping for its highest ratings since 2010 when Chicago was winning the Cup against the Flyers, which were the best in the last six years. When Boston played it was at 4.5 million when they won against the Canucks and now the two recent champions will play this season.
Last year the Kings and Devils did not do very well and NBC is expecting a big jump from that. Game 1 gets down on Wednesday night in Chicago and the first game will be on NBC, as will Game 4. Game 2 and Game 3 will be on the NBC Sports Network to give the channel some extra eyes, while Game 5, 6 and 7 if necessary will be on NBC and the first game and the others will start at 8 PM ET.
The broadcast booth for NBC will have Eddie Olczyk as the analyst and Pierre McGuire as the on-ice reporter, while the studio has host Liam McHugh and analysts Mike Milbury and Keith Jones. Darren Pang and Jeremy Roenick handle the on-ice segments for the team and they will also be doing pregame work for the teams.
The media broadcasters feel that it will be a tight series between two evenly matched teams and NBC is working on giving a good experience, with zoomed in action and spotlights in each game. The playoffs have gotten decent ratings this year for NBC, NBC Sports Network and CNBC but so far have been behind last season overall, but the NBC games are up on average from last year. The conference finals did very well in the ratings and NBC is hoping for that to continue. Olczyk does local games for the Blackhawks, but he is a solid broadcaster and that should have no issues heading into the finals.
From SI.com: Why are two games airing on the NBC Sports Network instead of NBC? "It's always been the system even when you had the NBC Sports Network as Versus -- that's the contract," Flood said. "We've always had the two games there and that's part of providing the value of the NBC Sports Network to cable operators. Clearly, it's an advantage to drive the audience back and forth between the two [networks] and you saw it throughout the playoffs. We were getting incredible numbers off NBC Sports Network as well as NBC. The promotion across the two platforms is a huge win for us. That combination is a great way to grow the NBC Sports Network.