Your Complete Guide to the 2014-15 NHL Season on Canadian TV

I’m not sure how much more can be said ahead of opening night tomorrow when Rogers will officially begin their 12-year broadcast of the NHL. Below is a list of links to the various aspects of the schedule and broadcast that has been covered over the past months. I will most likely do a weekly schedule (similar to the weekly NFL posts) due to the week-to-week announcements of channel placings of Saturday night games. If there seems to be something I’ve missed or you have a question about something not covered, just hit up the comments.

• Rogers 2014-15 NHL National Broadcast Schedule
• TVA Sports National 2014-15 NHL Schedule
• Sportsnet Unveils Multi-Million Dollar Studio for NHL Broadcasts
• Rogers GameCentre Live Announcement: No More National Blackouts
• GameCentre Live Includes New GamePlus Feature Only For Rogers Customers
• Rogers Announces Huge Hockey Broadcast Team
• Hockey Fans Can’t Comprehend NHL Blackout Rules
• News & Notes: Hockey Edition — GameCentre Live Sign Up, CHL March Madness
• OMNI Television To Offer NHL In 22 Languages This Season Including Punjabi Hockey Night In Canada

Below is a breakdown of each Canadian team and their television schedule. Definition of regional blackout area is in brackets. To find which out which team is in your regional, go here. Regional schedule is linked to a separate post per team which should also include radio broadcast information. National schedules for English and French are in the list above.

Buffalo Sabres 2014-15 NHL Schedule on Bell TV

Good news for Buffalo Sabres fans in the Niargara Falls / Fort Erie / very Southern Ontario region. The Sabres have announced that Bell TV will be showing select Sabres games again this season to those in the Buffalo viewing area. Provided at no additional charge, Bell Fibe and Bell Satellite customers can catch 53 games throughout the season on channel 1442. Games will not be available in the region on Game Centre Live or Centre Ice.

With this deal, along with 19 games available on Sportsnet / HNIC / FX Canada, Sabres fans will see all but nine regular season games for the upcoming season.

To see if you’re in the 50 km viewing area, the Sabres have a map here or you can search for your postal code on this PDF.

OMNI Television To Offer NHL In 22 Languages This Season Including Punjabi Hockey Night In Canada

Picking up where the CBC left off, OMNI Television will produce Hockey Night In Canada in Punjabi every Saturday night this season beginning October 11 with a doubleheader each week. Presumably, the early game will feature the Leafs and the late game featuring the Canucks and other Canadian NHL teams being broadcast if either of those teams aren’t in action.

In addition to the weekly games, OMNI will produce multilingual NHL content in 22 languages with a weekly Your Hockey segment and Hockey 101. Your Hockey will be a weekly segment in Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin and Italian that will screen during their respective national news broadcast beginning the week of September 29 and will include topics such as grassroots hockey, the ins-and-outs of minor hockey and profiles of hockey-related personalities in their community.

Hockey 101 will help new Canadians understand the basics of hockey including the rules of the game. It will premier in eight languages: English, French, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi, Portuguese and Tagalog. Episodes will premier the week of September 29 on OMNI Television and online at OMNI.tv. An additional 14 languages — Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Hindi, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Somali, Tamil, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese — will be added to on-air and online broadcasts in the coming weeks.

OMNI Television has stations in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

2014 NHL Pre-Season Begins Tonight

Another pre-season begins tonight and a slab of meaningless games are scheduled regionally and nationally. Sportsnet will have ten national games over the next two weeks, RDS will cover every Habs game, and the Edmonton Oilers will broadcast all their non-national games on their website, something no other Canadian team seems to be doing. Of course, the networks have a reason for not broadcasting Oilers games based on their previous season.

This will give us a slight glimpse into what Sportsnet has in mind for their coverage for the season and whether TSN will continue to offer their usual excellent standard of game broadcasts, but expect both networks to wait until the season proper to roll out any fancy new features and/or graphics packages.

EDIT: In my rush to post, I forgot to mention that all RDS games are regional this season, so only those in the Canadiens viewing area will see the action. Interestingly, no national French-language games scheduled for TVA Sports. Looks like CBC will be showing some Sportsnet pre-season games beginning this Wednesday, but CBC isn’t included on the NHL website schedule so I’m not sure if all national games will be on CBC or only select ones. A little weird.

Full schedule is below. All times are Eastern and regionally blacked-out games denoted by an asterisk.

Chicago Blackhawks 2014-15 NHL Schedule on WGN

If you’re a Blackhawks fan in Canada, prepare to enjoy 20 regular season games this season on WGN, which is included in most cable/satellite television packages. The Blackhawks are one of the very few teams who still have a contract that isn’t cable-exclusive. Play-by-play man Pat Foley will return to the booth alongside Blackhawks legend Eddie Olczyk on colour analysis. The schedule is below and all times are Central.

Sat Oct 18, Blackhawks vs Nashville 7:30pm
Sat Oct 25, Blackhawks at St. Louis 7pm
Sun Oct 26, Blackhawks vs Ottawa 6pm

Sun Nov 2, Blackhawks vs Winnipeg 8pm
Sun Nov 9, Blackhawks vs San Jose 6pm
Sun Nov 16, Blackhawks vs Dallas 6pm
Sat Nov 22, Blackhawks at Edmonton 9pm
Fri Nov 28, Blackhawks at Anaheim 3pm
Sat Nov 29, Blackhawks at Los Angeles 9pm

Sat Dec 13, Blackhawks at NY Islanders 6pm
Sat Dec 20, Blackhawks at Columbus 6pm
Sun Dec 21, Blackhawks vs Toronto 6pm

Sun Jan 4, Blackhawks vs Dallas 7pm
Sun Jan 11, Blackhawks vs Minnesota 7pm
Sun Jan 18, Blackhawks vs Dallas 5pm
Fri Jan 30, Blackhawks at Anaheim 9pm

Thu Mar 12, Blackhawks at Arizona 9pm
Sat Mar 14, Blackhawks at San Jose 3pm
Sun Mar 29, Blackhawks at Winnipeg 6:30pm
Sat Apr 11, Blackhawks at Colorado 8pm

Vancouver Canucks 2014-15 NHL Schedule on Sportsnet

Rogers has finally released the last Canadian regional television schedule for the upcoming season. The Vancouver Canucks will have 48 regional games covered by Sportsnet with all but four on SN Pacific. The remaining will be on Sportsnet One companion channel, Sportsnet Vancouver Hockey (not sure why they didn’t just go with SN-Canucks). I thought maybe with SN putting a few Habs games on City Montreal, they would do the same in Vancouver, but I guess it didn’t work out for whatever reason.

Dan Murphy will host rinkside while returning to the play-by-play and analyst positions are John Shorthouse and John Garrett. Sportsnet will also have six Canucks pre-season games broadcast nationally.

Canucks on TSN Radio

The newly rebranded (lanches Mon. Sept. 8) TSN Radio 1040 in Vancouver will have all 82 regular season games as well as seven pre-season matchups. John Shorthouse and Dave Tomlinson will be returning to call all the action during the season, with no replacement named yet for Rick Ball, who has moved to Calgary to work on Sportsnet.

Schedule is below. All times are Pacific. Subject to change.

Rogers GameCentre Live Announcement: No More National Blackouts

The good news keeps on coming: Besides offering more games than ever on television, Rogers announced today their plans for GameCentre Live and the main talking point is that you will be able to watch more games than ever on your laptop/phone/tablet/etc with fewer blackouts.

Here are the highlights:

• All national games will be available to streamers, no matter the team and no matter where you live in the country. This is definitely the biggest change and the biggest difference between the Canadian and US versions now.
• For regional games that Rogers owns rights to (Canucks, Habs, Oilers, Flames, and some Leafs), these games will also no longer be blacked out to you. The difference here though is to view these games you will need a cable TV subscription to Sportsnet and unlock the games via BDU authentication.
• The only games that will remain blacked out to in-region viewers will be TSN’s properties: Sens, Jets, and half of the Leafs regional games.
• For French-language viewers, beginning in January (delayed due to technical issues according to Keith Pelley, Rogers Media President) you will get to see all TVA Sports broadcasts of the Senators and Canadiens.
• All Stanley Cup playoff games will be available for streaming.
• GCL will be available on your computer, phone, and tablet with more devices and screens (e.g., Xbox) to be announced.
• UPDATE: Like the previous version, full length on-demand games, condensed games and highlights will be available as well as over 800 archived games dating back to 1960.

If you’re a Rogers wireless or internet customer, you can enjoy free access to GCL from the beginning of the season until the end of the year. For the rest of us, a full season will cost you $200 with a discounted rate of $180 available until October 3 (GCL was $150 for early bird last year). From January 1 onwards, for Rogers and non-Rogers subscribers, a half-yearly subscription will be available for $130. For those in the country who prefer their games in French, a French-only package including 60 Canadiens and 54 Senators games will be available for $60.

So, if you’re a fan of a team that Rogers owns the regional rights to, you’ll see all (or next to all if you’re a Leafs fan) games online this season. For the remaining teams, you’ll need to watch via TSN, TSN.ca or TSN GO. Here are the total games available with no local blackouts: Montreal, 82 English & 72 French; Ottawa, 29 English & 68 French; Edmonton, 82; Vancouver, 82; Calgary, 82; Winnipeg, 22.

Rogers promises more information will be released in the coming weeks in regards to GameCentre Live (and presumably Centre Ice). Personally, I would love the option for a team-specific season pass or even a USA pass (for those of us who support an American team). Registration will open early next week at rogers.com/nhl.

Sportsnet Grabs Canadiens Regional English-Language Broadcasts

Fans in Eastern Canada have been waiting patiently for TSN or Sportsnet to secure the English-language rights for the Montreal Canadiens and today their wishes were granted as Sportsnet announced they will broadcast 42 regional games this season in the first year of a three-year deal. As part of the deal, eight additional Montreal games will now be carried nationally for a total of 40 with all Habs games available in English for the first time.

The majority of games will air on the regionalized Sportsnet East. Surprisingly, three games (Oct 13, Nov 20, Dec 18) will be shown on City Montreal, which is not available for fans in Atlantic Canada, which is part of Montreal’s home viewing area. These three games conflict with NFL Thursday Night Football and MLB playoffs.

Rogers haven’t given any information as to who will be calling the action inside the booth, and whether they bring in two more people or they utilize their existing and long list of announcers already released.

UPDATE: The English broadcast team has been announced. John Bartlett will be leaving behind his gig calling Canadiens games on radio and move to television in the play-by-play role. Former NHL defenceman Jason York and previous analyst for Senators regional broadcasts will join him in the booth. Rinkside reporter and hosting duties will be shared between former CBC’er David Amber and and Montreal radio and television personality Chantal Desjardins.

PS: Habs fans outside of Quebec/Atlantic Canada, please don’t fill the comment section whining about how you no longer get all 82 games. You had a good ride while everyone else got shafted, now you get to join the slums of actually being blacked out.

Full schedule is below. All times are Eastern and schedule is subject to change.

Rogers Announces Huge Hockey Broadcast Team

With over 40 members for their debut into national hockey broadcasting, Rogers has kept the old faces from Sportsnet, the familiar faces from CBC and TSN, and brought in some new faces as announcers, analysts, and insiders for 2014–15.

News slowly trickled out over the past few months of personnel Rogers had signed up, including former TSN personalities Dave Randorf and Paul Romanuk. Now with the full release, we can see Rogers have nabbed some TSN folk, US folk and a whole load of CBC broadcasters.

Hosting all the programming across the suite of Rogers channels will be the familiar names of Ron MacLean, George Stroumboulopoulos, Jeff Marek and Darren Millard. The new name is former Canadian broadcaster Leah Hextall, who returns north of the border from Boston’s NESN.

National play-by-play commentators will be longtime CBC commentator Jim Hughson, former TSN’er Paul Romanuk, former CFL on TSN host Dave Randorf, and old-timer Bob Cole. Joining them as analysts from CBC will be Glenn Healy, Gary Galley, and Craig Simpson, and from TSN the young up-and-comer Mike Johnson. Regional commentators and reporters include a mix of former CBC and current Sportsnet staff. The (seemingly unnecessarily-long) list of studio people is below. 

Sadly, Rogers has hired the three worst parts of the former CBC Hockey Night In Canada staff: longtime d-bag Don Cherry, the well-past-his-prime Bob Cole and the always-terrible Glenn Healy. You could probably add PJ Stock to the list also, but no one really cares about him enough to expend the energy. All hate mail in regards to this topic can be directed to the comments section below.

The full broadcast team is after the jump.

Canadiens English-language broadcasts

There is still no rights holder for Anglophone Habs fans in Eastern Canada. It was reported a couple weeks ago both outlets (Bell and Rogers) were balking at the high price Montreal were asking for the regional rights. Bell had the previous rights and screened games on the now-defunct TSN-Habs specialty channel. TSN has since picked up Senators rights, which could possibly cause scheduling conflicts on TSN5. 

According to a vague tweet from Sportsnet President Scott Moore and a tweet from CTV Montreal reporter Brian Wilde, Rogers could be announcing rights to Habs games this week. Of course, Moore’s tweet could also be referring to an announcement about the future of NHL Centre Ice and Gamecentre. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Calgary Flames 2014-15 NHL Schedule on Sportsnet

Rogers will have full Flames coverage across their cluster of channels for the upcoming NHL season with Alberta & Saskatchewan viewers able to catch 50 regional games on Sportsnet West and alternate channel Sportsnet Flames. Sportsnet 960 The Fan will have all 82 games on your radio device.

There will be two newcomers to the television broadcast booth with Rick Ball and Kelly Hrudey joining the Sportsnet team. Host Roger Millions will be rinkside with updates. Both Ball and Hrudey come from CBC with Ball leaving Vancouver (and calling CFL games mid-season for TEAM radio) to move to Calgary.

On the radio side, The Fan 960 welcomes Derek Wills for play-by-play joining veteran analyst Peter Loubardias.

Full regional schedule below. All times are Mountain. Schedule subject to change.

Edmonton Oilers 2014-15 NHL Regional Schedule on Sportsnet

Fans of the Edmonton Oilers will be able catch all 82 regular season games across the Rogers/Sportsnet channels. 32 games will be shown nationally (schedule here) and the remaining 50 regional games will be available on Sportsnet West and alternate channel Sportsnet Oilers.

Kevin Quinn will be return to the broadcast booth calling play-by-play and analyst Drew Remenda will be joining him after spending the past 14 years on the San Jose Sharks telecast. Gene Principe will be rinkside for the 40 games on SN West and 10 games on SN Oilers.

CHED AM 630 will have the radio coverage with Jack Michaels and Bob Stauffer returning for another season.

Below is the full schedule. All times are Mountain. Schedule subject to change.

Rogers 2014-15 NHL National Broadcast Schedule

The future of Saturday nights on Canadian TV.

In a new era for hockey broadcasting in Canada, fans will see more games than ever, especially on free-to-air networks, as Rogers will show over 350 games nationally across the country, utilizing up to six networks, with games every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.

Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada will feature anywhere from four to eight games each week in a huge expansion of games for Canadian hockey fans. The allocation of what game screens on what network will be decided on a week-to-week basis, utilizing CBC, City, Sportsnet, Sportsnet One, Sportsnet 360 and FX Canada. FX Canada is currently available on all major providers except Bell, which may piss off a bunch of people, but I suspect no Canadian teams will feature on that channel.

Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey will feature at least one Canadian team each of the 35 weeks during the season and includes nine doubleheaders, with all games being shown on Sportsnet or Sportsnet One. Sunday night hockey will be new for this season, and Rogers will show 25 matchups will all but one featuring a Canadian team and all but one will be found on City. Sunday Night Hockey will be broadcast from a different community rink across Canada each week and will feature players, stories and entertainment.

The 2015 Winter Classic, All-Star Skills competition and All-Star game will be on CBC as usual and the annual Hockey Day in Canada will feature a Canadian triple-header on February 14. All playoff games will be on the Rogers array of stations.

In addition to all of the above, Sportsnet 360 will feature 25 US match-ups throughout the season on Thursday nights (and one Friday night), Sportsnet One currently has 40 American match-ups scheduled on a variety of nights throughout the season, and except even more to be added at a later date.

Hopefully I have managed to include everything in the schedule below without any doubling-up, but no promises as it is a shit-ton of games.

EDIT: Forgot to include a little passage on NHL Centre Ice and Gamecentre. So far, for those north of the border, there is ZERO information currently available in regards to either of these services. Gamecentre is currently available to US-based viewers as it always has been. Included in the Rogers purchase are rights to both Centre Ice and Gamecentre in Canada only, so both could be drastically different. Given how many games are already showing on TV, it will be interesting to see what they offer, especially for those (including yours truly) who support a US team and would live to see every game.

All times are Eastern. Schedule subject to change.

NBC Will Show 13 Games For The 2014-15 NHL Season

NHL on NBC returns for the 2014–15 NHL season and viewers who don’t have cable and/or prefer NBC’s production over Canadian networks will enjoy 13 games through the season, beginning with a US Thanksgiving Day Black Friday game between the Flyers and Rangers. Following that will be the Winter Classic in Washington and then January through to April will mostly be the usual Sunday afternoon game.

As they always do, NBC’s games will feature some of the biggest teams in the NHL numerous times — Blackhawks (4), Red Wings (3), Penguins (3), Rangers (3), Flyers (3), Blues (2), Bruins (2), Capitals (2).

Returning to the broadcast booth for its main telecasts will be play-by-play voice Mike “Doc” Emrick, as well as analyst Eddie Olczyk and “Inside the Glass” analyst Pierre McGuire.

Full schedule is below. All times Eastern and games subject to change.

TVA Sports National 2014-15 NHL Schedule

Newcomers to hockey TVA Sports will broadcast nearly 300 games nationally during the upcoming 2014–15 NHL season after obtaining the French-language rights as part of the landmark 12-year deal by Rogers. To accommodate all the action (with at least one game nearly every night of the season), TVA Sports will be adding a second channel.

TVA Sports will show 22 Saturday night regular-season Canadiens games (all but one Saturday night game), the Stanley Cup Finals, Winter Classic and other outdoor games, All-Star Game, and the NHL Draft. For something different, beginning in the new year, TVA Sports will offer fan voting to determine what matchup will be broadcast on select Monday nights.

For their Saturday night Canadiens broadcasts, the pre-game will be hosted by Jean Louis and his team including Renaud Lavoie, Michel Bergeron, Paul Houde and Elizabeth Rancourt. Once the game begins, Félix Séguin and analyst Patrick Lalime will be in the booth with Renaud Lavoie close to the benches. Dave Morissette will handle post-game duties.

The full schedule can be found be clicking each month:
October — November — December — January — February — March — April

Toronto Maple Leafs 2014-15 NHL Regional Schedule on TSN4 and Sportsnet

Both TSN and Sportsnet will both be showing regional Leafs games for the 2014–15 NHL season, and both are advertising the fact each network is showing “more games than ever!” Of course, Sportsnet includes 40 national games when making that statement.

TSN covered 17 Toronto games last season, and this year that increases to 26 games, all of which will be available to watch on the new TSN4 channel that launches on Monday (August 18). TSN4 will become the default TSN channel for those in the Leafs’ Ontario broadcast area. For TSN’s live game coverage, the network’s broadcast teams feature play-by-play announcers Gord Miller and Chris Cuthbert and game analysts Ray Ferraro and Jamie McLennan.

Sportsnet Ontario will have 16 regional games throughout the season with veteran broadcaster Paul Romanuk  making his Sportsnet debut, calling play-by-play for all of the Toronto regional broadcasts alongside analyst Greg Millen. Leafs TV will not have any live matches this season and, according to the Leafs via James Mirtle, the channel will show Leafs Today on non-game days, weekly summary show, game day skate shows, game highlights and post-game shows. I’m sure only the most-desperate of fans will continue to pay for that riveting programming.

TSN Radio 1050 Toronto and Sportsnet 590 The Fan

Sportsnet 590 The Fan and TSN Radio 1050 Toronto will split the Leafs radio rights with 41 games each with TSN also having seven pre-season matches. Both stations will feature the same commentary team — Joe Bowen on play-by-play and analyst Jim Ralph.

On The Fan, Gord Stellick will host the two-hour Leafs Nation Post-Game to wrap up each broadcast. Plus, every Saturday night – beginning Saturday, Oct. 4 – Stellick will host Hockey Central Saturday from 5 to 7pm. For TSN Radio, Jim Tatti and Jeff O’Neill will have extensive pre-game, post-game and intermission shows.

Full schedule below. All times are Eastern. Schedule subject to change.