Pens/Wings Game 7 Was The Most Watched NHL Game In 36 YEARS!!!

Wow!!! I knew that the numbers for Friday night's hockey game was going to be high, perhaps the highest in quite some time, but I never imagined that we would be going back 36 years for this. Holy cow! From NHL.com

Friday night’s deciding Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final on NBC Sports was the most-watched NHL game in 36 years (5/10/73, Stanley Cup Final Game 6 on NBC, Montreal-Chicago, 9.4 million) drawing an average of 8 million viewers. Overall, the series averaged 5.6 million viewers for the five games on NBC, the best since 2002 on ABC (three telecasts, Detroit-Carolina, 5.8 million average viewers).

Friday’s Game 7 earned a 4.3 rating and an 8 share, the best for a series-ending game in six years (6/9/03, Game 7, Anaheim-New Jersey, 4.6/8).

NBC Sports’ Game 7 finished No. 1 for the night in every category including viewership and household ratings.

Just incredible. And so much for the low ratings of having a Game 7 on a Friday and no one watching. Yeah, we were wrong. People watched this game. And just for comparison's sake, according to TVbythenumbers.com, Game 5 of the NBA Finals averaged 9.6 million viewers. And while that is higher, talk about a close gap between 2 sports where such a close gap should not exist. And to think that this game accomplished this feat on a Friday night without the constant promotion from ESPN. Good for hockey and good for the NHL. And it is nice to see that after the nightmare that was the Lockout a few years ago, hockey has rebounded and is now bigger, better, and stronger than ever. Given the same series, I don't think this could have happened in the late 90s and early 2000s before and the year or 2 following the lockout.

And wait, weren't people saying a few weeks ago that no one was going to watch this series because it was a re-match of last year's Stanley Cup??