It won’t matter that the gold medal Olympic ice hockey game took place in the early morning hours in North America.
The United States’ thrilling overtime win against Canada, which won the stars and stripes its first gold medal in men’s hockey since the 1980 Miracle on Ice over the Soviet Union, will surely earn a massive viewership number for NBC. It’ll be remembered for a scrappy, perhaps sometimes lucky effort on the part of Team USA. But more than anything, it’s the reintroduction of NHL players to Olympic competition that put this tournament over the top.
For the first time since the Sochi Olympics in 2014, the NHL allowed its players to compete in the biggest international sporting event on the calendar. It didn’t come without risk. The Pittsburgh Penguins might be without superstar Sidney Crosby for an extended period as a result. The Canadian captain missed the semifinal and final for his squad after suffering a lower-body injury versus Finland in the quarterfinal.
Twice in the past two years, however, best-on-best international hockey competition has proven to be a massive viewership draw. It started with last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off. After a run of strong audiences throughout the preliminary and semifinal rounds, a USA-Canada final earned nearly 10 million viewers for what amounted to a meaningless exhibition tournament on paper. That game was the most-watched non-Olympic hockey game in the modern era, beating out every single Stanley Cup Final game on record.
Fast-forward one year, and the USA and Canada are back at it, only this time in the Olympics. The 8:10 a.m. ET start certainly won’t help matters, but it probably won’t hurt viewership as much as some might think, especially with the extra period sending the game into the late morning on the East Coast.
Time and again, Americans have proven they’re excited to watch hockey under two conditions. First, there has to be an international element to the competition. And second, there needs to be NHL players involved.
Back in 2010, the last time the United States played a gold medal game in the Olympics, 27.6 million viewers tuned in to watch. Eight years prior in Salt Lake City, 17.1 million Americans watched the USA compete for gold. Compare that with the most-watched Stanley Cup Final in the modern era, 8.9 million viewers for Game 7 between the Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues in 2019, and there’s no competition. Much like soccer, Americans are happy to root on their country but largely tune out when it comes to rooting on clubs.
“This is all about our country right now. I love the USA. I love my teammates. It’s unbelievable,” game-winning goal scorer Jack Hughes told NBC’s Kathryn Tappen after the game.
That’s how Americans watching at home feel too. People want to feel good about their country. They want to be proud to be American. And watching the best our nation has to offer pull a massive upset over our neighbors to the north is something everyone can get behind.
Now, it’s understandable why the NHL would be reluctant to release its players. There’s the injury element, for one. But there’s also the fact that, despite international competitions historically garnering huge audiences, those fans have not typically converted into NHL viewers. The league saw a slight, yet ephemeral bump in audience last year following the 4 Nations Face-Off. One would imagine something similar will happen post-Olympics. A few hockey-curious viewers might watch a few games, but most people will go back to forgetting the sport ever existed.
For the NHL, there’s a lot of risk for little reward.
But for fans, having NHL players in the Olympics means everything. With all due respect to the college kids and semipros filling previous Olympic squads, this competition only matters when the best in the world are playing. And there’s no question, not a single fan watching Sunday morning’s game gives a rat’s ass if including NHL players makes business sense for the league. They want to see the best in the world represent their country. That’s it.
Hopefully, the NHL sees the intrinsic value of releasing its players to compete on the world stage, even if it doesn’t see immediate returns to its bottom line. If the NHL can find ways to replicate this World Cup-like feel for international hockey competitions on an annual or biannual basis, the long-term gains will be worth whatever risks are associated with allowing players to participate in such competitions.
