Hockey fans may be experiencing delayed feeds when watching live NHL games on ESPN+ this season.

Awful Announcing published comment from ESPN on Thursday in which the network acknowledged a user-reported issue where game streams were significantly behind live action after commercial breaks. ESPN said it was actively looking for a solution and provided more detail on why some users may experience the problem.

“On select Smart TVs, the ESPN app video player is designed to return buffering streams to the point of interruption, ensuring that viewers do not miss content due to latency issues,” Awful Announcing wrote of ESPN’s explanation. “However, this behavior also applies to ad breaks. When the video player takes time to populate ads, or if there is buffering time between ads, this can cause users to return to live action late, which can accumulate over time.”

ESPN was responding to the outlet after it covered allegations made by DJ Bean, host of the hockey podcast “What Chaos!.” On an episode released Wednesday, he claimed the Disney-owned network was utilizing a streaming system that plays commercials longer than a traditional television broadcast, therefore delaying when viewers return to game action.

“I believe ESPN+ is inserting ads that can be longer than the broadcast’s commercial breaks. This eventually makes viewers’ feeds no longer live, and they don’t know that unless they manually check,” Bean suggested.

Bean also played a video of himself watching an ESPN+ stream of a live NHL game, noting the game clock was at 14:50 remaining in the third period after two minutes of advertisements. However, when he manually checked if his stream was behind, he found himself fast-forwarding to 13:09 remaining in regulation, rather than the stream automatically returning him to live action.

So, Bean’s amateur investigation was apparently on to something, but not entirely accurate in its conclusions, at least according to ESPN.

The issue is still important, however. Viewers encountering the delay may unknowingly miss a highlight play and hear about it before it happens. This could be especially relevant for Washington Capitals fans who choose to mute and sync their ESPN+ stream with John Walton and Ken Sabourin’s Capitals Radio broadcast via another device.

Most out-of-network Capitals games are available to stream on ESPN+ (subject to blackouts) and ESPN’s newly-launched direct-to-consumer app. Six of the team’s remaining games will be nationally televised on ESPN or ABC, which will be available for streaming on the app with a subscription.

Have you encountered any delayed stream issues while watching NHL games on ESPN+? Let us know in the comments.