NHL Game of the Week

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Presented by
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
NHL Game of the Week
GenreNHL game telecasts
Presented by
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons15
Production
Camera setupMulti-camera
Running time180 minutes or until game ends
Production companies
Original release
Network
ReleaseJanuary 14, 2006 (2006-01-14) 
May 8, 2021 (2021-05-08)
Network
ReleaseNovember 26, 2021 (2021-11-26) 
present
Related

The National Hockey League Game of the Week is a branding used for regular season National Hockey League weekend games that are typically televised on a national broadcast network in the U.S.

The branding was previously used by NBC on Sunday afternoons, beginning at the weekend of the NFL Conference Championship games when it held NHL broadcast rights between the 2005–06 and 2020–21 seasons. During the 2016–17, NBC began to promote the Star Sunday brand on both the Game of the Week and its Sunday Night Hockey broadcasts on sister cable network NBCSN, focusing primarily on the NHL's star players. Star Sunday featured extensive pre-game, in-game and post-game coverage of each featured player. The first game under the new package featured the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings on January 22, 2017, with Ryan McDonagh and Dylan Larkin the featured players of their respective teams.[1]

Beginning with the 2021–22 season, ABC replaced NBC as the league's network broadcast partner.[2][3] Since then, ABC has typically aired one game per weekend, usually on Saturday afternoons, beginning in February. Due to the current arrangement of ABC's sports programming being produced and co-branded by ESPN, the broadcasts carry the NHL on ESPN production and branding.

NHL on NBC era

Historically, there was game of the week broadcasts in the past but until NBC Sports took over broadcasting rights to the National Hockey League from ESPN and ABC they were never consistent.

Starting in 2007–08, the most important games on primarily Sundays or Thursdays would be titled NHL on NBC Game of the Week which eventually got moved to only Sundays later that season.

Then as a part of the deal made between NBC and the NHL in 2011–12, the game of the week package would add the NHL Thanksgiving Showdown to its schedule and this would continue until the 2020-21 season.[4][5]

ESPN/ABC takes over

In March 2021, after nearly 20 years away, ESPN announced it had reacquired broadcasting rights to the NHL and as a part of that deal ABC would take over rights to air the game of the week package.[6][3][7][8]

ABC Hockey Saturday as is would be called would debut on November 26, 2021 with the Thanksgiving Showdown between the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins.[9] The Thanksgiving Showdown, however, only aired on ABC in its first year of the 7-year deal; the network traded it to TNT Sports in favor of airing Stadium Series games either on ABC or ESPN, starting in its second year.

ABC’s game of the week coverage consists of mostly of either doubleheaders or tripleheaders from Saturday afternoon to night which usually begins at the last weeks of the season which starts with a 30-minute pregame show.[10]

Schedules

Notes

References

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