{"id":742806,"date":"2026-06-17T18:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/742806\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T18:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:02:09","slug":"nhl-says-the-2026-playoffs-is-the-most-watched-on-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/742806\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL says the 2026 playoffs is the most-watched on record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The NHL said Tuesday the Stanley Cup Playoffs this spring were the most-watched on record in the U.S., with an average of 1.8 million viewers.<\/p>\n<p>That surpassed the previous record of 1.56 million in 1996 and is up 68% over last year.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN reported this was the most-watched Cup final since 2019. Carolina beat Vegas in six games in a final without some of the biggest hockey markets in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the increase across sports ratings can be attributed to a change in how Nielsen is counting viewers, but hockey is also enjoying a popularity spike, especially among women, after the 4 Nations Face-Off and the Olympics and in light of shows like \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d and \u201cOff Campus\u201d putting it in front of a different audience.<\/p>\n<p>After ending a decade-and-a-half playoff drought, the Buffalo Sabres came within one goal of reaching the Eastern Conference Finals, <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumlocalnews.com\/nys\/buffalo\/sports\/2026\/05\/19\/sabres-lose-to-canadiens-in-game-7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">losing<\/a> to the Montreal Canadiens in overtime of Game 7 of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They defeated the Boston Bruins in six games in the first round.<\/p>\n<p>The Sabres now look ahead to the NHL Draft, which takes place on June 26-27 at the KeyBank Center. After being eliminated from the playoffs, the Sabres hold the 27th overall pick in the first round of the draft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The NHL said Tuesday the Stanley Cup Playoffs this spring were the most-watched on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[3979,64,63,42498,6581,44,575,50144,85],"class_list":["post-742806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-associated-press","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-rochester","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}