How to stream NHL hockey games
With the 2021-2022 NHL season set to officially kick off on October 12th, 2021 we thought it was a good time to talk about how to stream NHL hockey in Canada.
One of the biggest misconceptions about streaming is that getting access to sports is difficult.
The fact of the matter is that sports has been very easy to stream for years. TSN and Sportsnet have had their own streaming offerings for several years. DAZN who launched in Canada in August 2017 has been expanding rapidly.
On top of that the leagues themselves have their own streaming services like MLB.TV, NBA League Pass, NHL.TV as well as offerings from AHL, WNBA, WWE and more recently the CHL launching its own service.
Like most sports streaming, hockey specifically can be complicated for the average consumer to navigate. Not because there aren’t any options to stream games but because of things like national and regional broadcast deals with every team it can be hard to figure out exactly where you can watch the specific games you want to watch.
As such before you decide you want to stream and watch hockey you need to answer 3 simple questions.
Where do you live and will you ever travel outside of that area?
How many hockey games do you want access to?
What specific teams do you want to follow?
It’s unfortunate that the NHL and all of the teams as well as their broadcast partners make things so complicated for the average hockey fan. You’ll hear and read about things like blackouts and we’ll dive into that further down this article.
Most of the issues for hockey and most of the other big sports leagues stem from old school broadcast television deals.
In 2013 Rogers and the NHL announced a huge 12 year deal. At the time NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said this:
"This is a deal that we think is transformational," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "Nobody has ever done a deal quite like this in terms of its structure, its length or its magnitude. It's focused on delivering NHL hockey to the most passionate hockey fans in the world on a country-wide basis in a way that we think will give them the greatest connectivity to the game." - Source
So in 2021 after 8 years into the deal has it transformed the way that fans connect with the game? In our opinion not so much and here is why.
For most consumers if you want to watch as an example every game from your local team there is no way to subscribe to only one streaming service to do so.
On top of that if you travel outside of your local region then you can get blacked out of watching your games with the service you subscribe to, and may have to subscribe to another service.
In Canada you have to cobble together a bunch of options depending on how you answered the 3 basic questions we posed above.
Here at Kutko we are huge hockey fans and as such we’re trying all of the hockey streaming services and giving you our impressions of what works best.
TSN
TSN’s streaming service called TSN Direct will run you $19.99 a month (plus tax) or there is a 24 hour option that costs $7.99 (plus tax). There is also a 6 month pass for $99.95 (plus tax).
TSN owns all the regional rights to Montreal Canadiens, Winnipeg Jets or Ottawa Senators hockey games. They also own the rights to 26 Toronto Maple Leaf games. Again though you have to live in those regions to be able to watch those games.
The Good: If you are in the local Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg regions and a fan of those specific teams then you can probably get by with only subscribing to TSN.
The Bad: TSN’s streaming service is more expensive than Sportsnet and you’re not paying just for hockey, you’re paying for all the sports they cover whether you want them or not. The service is available on limited streaming devices currently. UPDATE: Nov 2022 Just prior to the 2022 World Cup TSN launched a version fo their app for Roku, NVidia Shield and Amazon FireStick. Much like our earlier review of TSN’s service the on demand capability of watching NHL games after they air is limited and hard to find on the app.
Depending on what games you want and where you live you can’t get away with just using TSN.
An example of a regional game being blacked out on TSN.
Sportsnet
Sportsnet has their Sportsnet Now service that charges a newly reduced rate of $14.99 per month (plus tax) or $149.99 yearly (plus tax) for what they call the standard version of the service. They also offer a Sportsnet Now Premium version that costs $34.99 per month (plus tax) or $249.99 yearly (plus tax).
What’s the difference between Sportsnet Now Standard and Sportsnet Now Premium? The simple chart below explains it all.
Still don’t get what the difference is? Here is how Sportsnet explains it.
Standard includes over 300 total NHL games, including all games of the Oilers, Flames or Canucks, or 56 Maple Leafs games, depending on where you live. To get one of these team’s regional games, you must reside within their broadcast region as regional blackouts apply.
Premium has the same hockey content as Standard, plus hundreds of additional out-of-market games. This means it allows you to watch teams that aren’t your local ones. Limited blackout restrictions apply.
In addition to more NHL games, subscribers also get Bundesliga, FA Cup, United Rugby Championship, Premiership Rugby, National Rugby League, Super League Rugby and IndyCar.
Still not clear, well then Sportsnet has a specific page on their website to explain “What are NHL Blackouts? Here’s what you need to know”
In short “regional blackouts are determined based on your location at the time you are streaming the content, not based on your billing address, or whether a team is playing at home or on the road.”
Image Source - Sportsnet Website detailing NHL blackout regions in Canada.
As stated on Sportsnet’s website:
Sportsnet does not own the regional rights to the Montreal Canadiens, Winnipeg Jets or Ottawa Senators. As a result, the only Canadiens, Jets or Sens games that are available on Sportsnet NOW are ones that appear during a Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday night national games.
So if you live in the Canadiens, Jets or Sens local region as defined by the map above you don’t want Sportsnet, you’d want to use the TSN service.
Even if you don’t subscribe to Sportsnet you can use the app to watch game highlights and clips.
Along with the price reduction for this season Sportsnet has said they have made some vast improvements to their streaming service. You can read the full press release here.
One of the quotes of that press releases states:
The richer, personalized user experience for SN NOW is innovated by Deltatre, while the cloud-native streaming platform runs on Firstlight Media’s microservices architecture, together delivering improved video quality, reduced latency, and enhanced viewing features.
Unfortunately early user reviews of the new app have not been great. With lots of users reporting issues in terms of stability and useability.
Some users even reported getting an email from Rogers stating
We would like to acknowledge that some customers have experienced technical issues with the new SN NOW since it was relaunched earlier this month.
We apologize for this and have been working around the clock to identify and correct these issues by making updates to the service over the past few days.
Here are a few tips you can try if you’re still having trouble:
Update the Sportsnet app on whatever device you are streaming from
Try streaming from a different device
Contact Customer Support
Hopefully they get these issues resolved with the hockey season just getting going.
Along with the new app and new technology, Sportsnet hockey has a new studio they premiered.
Sportsnet’s new studio
The Good: Sportsnet’s service is cheaper than TSN with their recent price reduction.
The Bad: Like TSN, Sportsnet does not allow you to just subscribe just for hockey. You end up paying for all sports on the channel. Sportsnet also doesn’t make the games available to watch on demand right away after they finish and when they are made available on demand they don’t stay up for very long.
Depending on what games you want and where you live you can’t get away with just using Sportsnet.
CBC
If you are a Hockey Night in Canada fan you can watch the Saturday night doubleheaders on the CBC Gem streaming app which is completely free. All that is required is setting up a free account. There are zero blackouts for these games since CBC has multiple local feeds.
The Good: CBC Gem is completely free, so being able to watch HNIC broadcasts every Saturday night let’s most Canadians carry on the tradition.
The Bad: You can only watch CBC’s games live. They don’t make the games available to watch on the CBC Gem app after they air. This is because these games are produced by Rogers and Sportsnet.
RDS & TVA
If you live in the defined Montreal broadcast region and want to watch the Montreal Canadian games in French then you will need a mix of RDS and TVA Sports.
The RDS Direct service costs $19.99 a month (plus tax) or there is a 24 hour option that costs $7.99 (plus tax). There is also a 6 month pass for $99.95 (plus tax).
The TVA Sports streaming service costs $19.99 a month (plus tax) or $199.99 (plus tax) for a year.
NHL Live
Then finally you have the NHL Live streaming service which in Canada is operated by Rogers. As of the publishing of this article this service costs $179.99 for the season (plus tax) which is a early bird price. Eventually this service will cost $199.99 (plus tax) for the season. During the pre-season games there was no monthly option. With the season set to start they have added a monthly option for $29.99 (plus tax) a month. Fans who live outside of the Montreal region can buy a pass for all Montreal games for $59.99 (plus tax) for the season.
UPDATE: As of the 2022/2023 NHL season the NHL service is no longer operational in Canada. It’s now been folded into the Sportsnet streaming service.
The problem with the NHL service is that it still incorporates blackouts but via a reverse method. It won’t let you watch any games that are deemed in market based on your location. So if you live in what is defined as the Calgary / Edmonton region then you can’t watch Calgary / Edmonton games on it.
On the plus side even if you don’t subscribe to the service you can still use it to go back and watch recaps of games and highlights for free. Most games will have a recap and a condensed version of the game.
The NHL service picks up and offers broadcasts from various local providers of the game. So many times you can watch the home or away broadcasts of the game. As an example with an Ottawa vs Montreal game you can watch the english local TSN Ottawa feed, the english TSN Montreal feed or the french RDS feed.
An example of the various NHL feeds for a game as well as the Recap and Condensed Game
The other annoying factor of the NHL service no matter what part of the world you use it in is that they for some reason don’t show commercials. This doesn’t mean there aren’t commercial breaks, it’s a live sporting event broadcast with commercial breaks built in. Yet when these breaks happen no matter what source broadcaster is doing the game instead of seeing the local ads the NHL manually inserts nothing.
Often it will be a 3-4 minute on screen notification saying ‘commercial break in progress’ with the NHL logo. In past seasons the NHL has run house ads of their own showcasing things like Top Goals, Top Saves and for some reason Top Cellys which sound fine except for the fact they showed these exact same ads over and over again and every commercial break during a game.
An example of what you would see at every ad break on the NHL streaming service.
Over the course of the entire NHL seasons they didn’t update these ads with the latest goals, saves and celebrations. Instead you would see these same ads 15-20 times every game over the 82 game season. Not to mention the audio level of these ads was several octaves louder than the actual broadcast which would be very jarring.
After watching the first few games of the season it looks like the NHL has gotten rid of the Top Goals, Top Saves and Top Celly ads and has some real ads but not many. So far we’ve seen some ads on repeat for Harvey’s, TD Bank and the PC political party. After that you get treated to the commercial break in progress splash screen.
Rogers operated NHL Live service costs $179.99 Canadian for the early bird pass, normally it costs $199.99 Canadian for the season.
The Good: The NHL service does have all of the games live and on demand. During live games you can pause and rewind the stream. Even if you don’t pay for the service you can use it to watch both a shortened recap of the game or a condensed version of the game. You can also watch highlights.
The service offers all the games nicely organized by day and team.
The Bad: In Canada the service is expensive. Blackout restrictions. No commercials or the same few ads over and over again.
US - ESPN+
In the US the NHL streaming service is no more. Much like the Rogers deal that was signed in 2013, the NHL signed a new broadcast deal in the US. NBC was the primary NHL partner previously but they have been replaced by Disney and ESPN and the ESPN+ streaming service that costs $6.99 US per month (plus tax).
We were able to subscribe to the US ESPN+ service and still watch the Canadian feeds of the games whether the games were on TSN or Sportsnet. The games were always available on demand right away after they finished.
The negative is that the on demand games are not easily organized by date or team. It’s just one scrolling list of games.
Looking at the NHL section of ESPN+ and how they organize games.
So if you miss the full game or even part of it you can go back to watch it from the beginning. It also allows you to rewind back during a live broadcast as well as pause the feed at anytime. Something that the TSN and Sportsnet app do not allow you to do.
Oddly since ESPN+ is essentially replacing the NHL app in the US one big feature that is missing from the ESPN+ NHL section is the ability to watch Recaps, Condensed Games and highlights. Maybe this will change once the regular season starts.
ESPN+ also has an interesting feature called Multicast which allows you to watch multiple feeds on one screen.
An example of the ESPN+ Multicast feature.
ESPN+ also at the time of writing this article is not showing ads during commercial breaks in the game. Much like the NHL service you get a static screen telling you a commercial break is in progress. You can see what it looks like in the example below.
The first game of the season that ESPN was covering themselves was Pittsburgh versus Tampa and we got a chance to see what their coverage would look like including the graphics and an interesting drone angle during the game.
ESPN+ NHL in game coverage
ESPN+ NHL Hockey coverage also includes their hockey studio shows called The Point and In the Crease. There is also ESPN’s digital show called The Drop which you can watch on YouTube.
Most of the episodes are available on demand to watch if you miss them. On opening night this included the return of NHL coach John Tortorella and included him offering his opinion on the controversial game winning Vegas goal versus Seattle.
The Good: ESPN+ is very affordable at $9.99 US a month.
The Bad: The way the games and the post game shows are organized both live and especially on demand are a bit of a mess. You can’t really sort games by team or day. No game recaps or highlights.
TNT
As part of the new US broadcast deal TNT also will be broadcasting / streaming some NHL games this season. Although TNT has a US app it’s still only a TV Everywhere app and users can’t subscribe directly to it.
TNT’s first game was on October 13th, New York Rangers vs. Washington.
NHL on TNT
Part of the broadcast included TNT’s panel of analysts comprised of Rick Tocchet, Anson Carter, Paul Bissonette, host Liam McHugh as well as Wayne Gretzky shooting on NBA legend Charles Barkley.
The TNT hockey panel.
The Good: TNT will add a interesting element to hockey coverage with the panel of analysts they have hired.
The Bad: TNT is not available to subscribe to directly.
Summary
In our opinion here is what streaming for NHL and any other sport should look like.
Get rid of the blackouts all together. It shouldn’t matter what province or city you live in. You should be able to watch whatever game(s) you want no matter where you are. The average streamer has no idea why blackouts exist and how to navigate them.
All the games should be available on one central service and that service already exists and it’s run by the NHL . Making fans pay for multiple services to watch games makes it to complicated. If the NHL and other leagues are going to sign deals with broadcasters then let the consumers choose what services to use. Give them the choice to use the NHL service or the broadcasters streaming services like TSN and / or Sportsnet.
The NHL service should be for people who only care about hockey and no other sports. Services like TSN and Sportsnet are for people who want more of a broader selection of sports.
Make the pricing more flexible. Not everyone is a serious fan and wants to pay for the whole season or to watch every single game. Let people buy individual game passes, so if they just want to tune into one game they can. The more price points the better.
That is how deliver NHL hockey to the most passionate hockey fans in the world on a country-wide basis in a way that will give them the greatest connectivity to the game.
Until you do that your doing a disservice to the fans.
We’ll update this article after the first few weeks of the season has started and update the progress of all of the services.
Looking for help?
If you’d like to know more about all of the options covered here for streaming NHL games feel free to arrange your free consultation with us today.
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