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The NHL's television audiences in Canada this season are a mixed bag of surprises and contractions.
Regionally, only one team, the Ottawa Senators, has increased its audience.
Nationally, the numbers are down or about flat.
The good news for the league is, since the prelockout season of 2003-04, the audiences, for the most part, have grown.
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The Vancouver Canucks rank as the biggest surprise.
Despite leading the Northwest Division, Canucks regional audiences are down 20 per cent. Rogers Sportsnet is averaging 242,000 viewers a game compared with 303,000 at this point last season.
Networks pay closer attention to long-term trends than year-to-year measurements, but the Canucks numbers also have declined 29 per cent from the prelockout season of 2003-04.
What's gone wrong?
"You can drive yourself nuts trying to analyze ratings," Sportsnet president Doug Beeforth said. "It's like the stock market. It is the long term that counts."
The Canucks' weak audiences may be an example of a winning record failing to mitigate the tedium of dull hockey. Goalie Roberto Luongo, not the goal scorers, is the team's star.
The Canucks' viewership decline may also explain why the national audience for the Western based Game 2 of the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada is down from last year. Limited interest in the home market will pull down the national number.
Hockey Night's Game 1 audience of 1.181 million is down 10 per cent from last year and 7 per cent from 2003-04.
Game 2 is averaging 686,000, a drop of 8 per cent from last year and a 15 per cent decline from 2003-04.
TSN, on the other hand, is averaging 463,000 viewers for its NHL telecasts, up 3 per cent from last year at this time and a whopping 49 per cent over 2003-04.
To explain Hockey Night's drop-off on Saturday nights, look no further than the decline on the ice of its leading property, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
At this time in 2003-04, the Leafs had the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference. A year ago, they slipped to ninth. This season, they're down to 14th.
The weak Leafs also affect the Hockey Night Game 2 audience. After watching a bad Leafs performance in Game 1, the Eastern audience is less inclined to stay tuned for Game 2.
Another factor that has reduced Hockey Night's Game 2 audience is the increased TV exposure of the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers. In 2003-04, not all Flames and Oilers games were televised. Now they are, on either on CBC, TSN, Sportsnet or pay per view.
"Saturday night is still special," Scott Moore, the head of CBC Sports, said. "But when every game is on TV, Hockey Night isn't the only game in town any more."
Moore says that Hockey Night, because it draws more than twice the average audience of TSN, has a larger number of casual fans watching. And they're more likely to switch channels if the game is boring or their favourite team is losing.
TSN president Phil King attributes his network's increases to the success of teams outside Toronto. A Canadian team has competed in each of the past three Stanley Cup finals. The playoff races are close and competitive. And the paucity of prime-time entertainment programming, caused by the Hollywood writers' strike, has increased TSN's week night hockey viewership.
Other regional audiences:
Flames: Averaging 117,000 viewers, down 3 per cent from last year at this point, up 3 per cent from 2003-04.
Oilers: Averaging 116,000, down 30 per cent from last year, up 22 per cent from 2003-04.
Leafs: Averaging 411,000, down 3 per cent from last year at this time, up 7 per cent from 2003-04.
Ottawa Senators: Averaging 102,000, up 17 per cent from last year, up 38 per cent from 2003-04.
Montreal Canadiens: Averaging 643,000 on Reseau des Sports, down 9 per cent from last season, but up 65 per cent from 2003-04.
