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.
History
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.
NHL on NBC era
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]
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]
Starting this season, NBC aired these Game of the Week games on a national basis, in addition to carrying the national broadcasts of the Winter Classic on New Year's Day and the Stanley Cup Playoffs during the Spring.
The Pittsburgh Penguins had an overall five network TV appearances during this season, making it the first NHL team in Pennsylvania and the first NHL team to have overall five network appearances in a regular season.
[13] NBC was supposed to air the Pittsburgh-Washington match-up on January 24, but however, the game was postponed due to hazardous weather, so the network instead selecting St. Louis-Chicago game as their match-up and it aired in the Primetime slot.
During the season, NBC's Star Sunday concept was added to the Game of the Week package.[14] The first game under the new brand took place on January 22, 2017, in a game between the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings.[1]
During this season, the Philadelphia Flyers had an overall five network TV appearances, making it the final NHL team in Pennsylvania and the second NHL team to have overall five network appearances (the first was Pittsburgh Penguins in 2011–12 season).[15] NBC initially announced that no NHL games would be aired on the network during the 2018 Winter Olympics, however they changed course and added three Sunday afternoon games in February as a lead-in to the Winter Olympics, allowing Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk to stay home and call 3 NHL games.[16][17][18][19] NBC correctly switched the final minutes of the 2018 NHL Stadium Series to its sister network NBCSN (except for viewers in the Washington D.C. market) at 11 p.m. Eastern Time after play stoppage due to the power outage delay.[20]Star Sunday returned on March 11, 2018, both as part of the Game of the Week and Sunday Night Hockey package.
[21] For the first time, NBC selected two regional games which to aired it in primetime on February 2, 2019. Star Sunday returned on February 3, 2019, both as part of the Game of the Week and Sunday Night Hockey package. This marked the first and only season of Star Sunday to have its presenting sponsor; AT&T was the first presenting sponsor and they branded themselves as Star Sunday presented by AT&T.
For this season only, Brian Boucher replaced Pierre McGuire on the lead broadcast team with Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk. McGuire would be reassigned to work with NBC's other broadcast teams. The Pittsburgh Penguins originally had six network television appearances during that season (for the first time since the 2011–12 season), however, due to the cancellation of their final two network TV appearances (the Washington-Pittsburgh match-up on March 22 and the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia match-up on March 29) because of the coronavirus pandemic, they reduced to four[22][23] as the games are postponed due to the pandemic, in which the rest of the regular season was paused indefinitely due to the pandemic.[24][25][26][27] All players and hockey staff were asked to self-quarantine in their home cities until further notice.[28][29][30][31] On May 26, 2020, Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner, was announced that the rest of the regular season was cancelled.[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the start of the 2020–21 NHL season has been delayed to January 13, 2021, and all teams would play a 56-game division-only schedule with the NHL temporarily realigning divisions to minimize travel as much as possible, with all seven Canadian teams playing one division due to COVID-19 cross-border travel restrictions imposed by the Government of Canada.
NBC Sports broadcast 16 NHL regular season games, which is the most ever NHL regular season games broadcast on NBC. The NHL on NBC schedule featured a number of rivalries, including the Capitals–Penguins rivalry, the Blackhawks–Red Wings rivalry, the Bruins-Rangers rivalry, and the Avalanche-Blues rivalry. Meanwhile, the Washington Capitals had five network television appearances this season, the third NHL team to have largest appearances during the regular season. The final NHL on NBC game was on May 8, 2021, with two games aired regionally, all but New York metro and Boston markets, who got the Penguins-Sabres game, got the Bruins-Rangers rivalry game, and the regional games were shared with the teams' respective broadcasters in their aforementioned markets.[39][40] It also marked as the final season for the games to aired on NBC after 16 years, as 10 games were regained by over-the-air ABC beginning next season.[41]
This season, ABC took over as the national over-the-air broadcaster for the NHL as part of a seven-year multiplatform deal with ESPN. They kicked off their coverage with the Thanksgiving Showdown on November 26. All games were simulcast on ESPN+, and featured a stats-based IceCast alternate broadcast, excluding the Thanksgiving Showdown.
Bruins-Rangers rivalry 2021 NHL Thanksgiving Showdown Originally Blues-Blackhawks, which filled the vacant 3:30 ET slot on ESPN+, which Rangers-Bruins had occupied
2022 Winter Classic rematch Special “IceCast” alternate broadcast was also produced and broadcast on ESPN+
April 23
New York Rangers vs. Boston Bruins
3 p.m.
Sean McDonough
Ray Ferraro
Emily Kaplan
Bruins-Rangers rivalry Special “IceCast” alternate broadcast was also produced and broadcast on ESPN+
2022–23 season (ABC)
ABC lost the rights to the Thanksgiving Showdown to TNT, but gained the rights to the NHL Stadium Series in return. ABC also introduced doubleheaders on select Saturdays, as well as a tripleheader during the last Saturday of the season. Like last season, all games were simulcast on ESPN+, and featured a separate Star Watch, Puck Possesser, or All-12 alternate broadcast.
Originally Penguins-Red Wings, which filled the 1 ET void left by Blues-Wild being flexed out Bruins can tie NHL team record for most wins in a regular season.
2023-24 season (ABC)
ABC had four doubleheader weeks this season, as well as the Stadium Series, and two tripleheaders, one on the same day as the first game of the Stadium Series, the other on the last Saturday of the season. All games will once again be simulcast on ESPN+.
^NBC selected Mikko Koivu as featured Star Sunday player for the game. No Red Wings player was selected; instead Joe Louis Arena was selected as the Red Wings' representative to mark the network's final game at the venue.
^NBC selected Claude Giroux and T. J. Oshie as featured Star Sunday players for the game.
^NBC selected Sean Couturier and Mika Zibanejad as featured Star Sunday players for the game.
^Game postponed after the first period due to weather concerns. Resumed at 12 A.M. on NBCSN.
^The Rangers were originally scheduled to be the Capitals' opponent, but that game was moved to March 20. As a result, the Capitals' home game against the Devils on March 7 was rescheduled to February 21, and due to the rescheduling of the Flyers–Bruins game at Lake Tahoe, this game was moved to the Game of the Week slot.
