Saturday night is all right for rivals
Rise of the Leafs has put meaning in local battles, and pulled viewers back in
Toronto-Ottawa. Toronto-Montreal. Ottawa-Montreal.
It’s a triangle of hockey that, this year, should revive rivalries that have waned, at least as far as the Maple Leafs were concerned.
All three teams made the playoffs last season, and while Montreal has struggled early, all three are expected to be in the playoff hunt again this year. As much fun as it is for the fans — and for Hockey Night in Canada, with viewership for Saturday Leafs games up 49 per cent — it might even be more fun for the players.
“They are real good rivalries,” says former Leafs defenceman Dion Phaneuf, now with the Senators. “You look at our division and how things are setting up, there’s going to be some real good Saturday night battles.”
All four of Toronto’s games against Montreal are on a Saturday this season and three of the Leafs’ four games against the Senators are on a Saturday, including the first of their Battle of Ontario games this weekend.
“When you have teams that are battling consistently for your space in the standings, it puts that much more emphasis on how important the points are,” Phaneuf says. “This division is a challenge. It’s a great time to be a part of these rivalries, and these games. Fans get into it if you’re playing meaningful games on Saturday night in a Canadian market.”
With the Leafs being not just good but fun to watch, their travelling fans will be out in much larger forces. They were certainly loud in Saturday’s 4-3 overtime win in Montreal, impressing Patrick Marleau, who saw a game at the Bell Centre in a new light.
“It’s a little bit different,” said Mar- leau, who used to visit Montreal as a San Jose Shark. “You can feel that rivalry, and how it has developed over the years.”
The rise of Canadian teams — Edmonton is the team to watch out west, despite a slow start, and the Flames-Oilers rivalry is now fully reengaged — is nothing but good news for the networks carrying the games.
“There is more buzz around the Canadian teams going into this year than there has been in recent memory,” said Scott Moore, the president of Sportsnet and NHL properties for Rogers. “We try to schedule as many Canadian-Canadian matchups as we can on Saturday nights. Not just in the East.”
HNiC is averaging 1.9 million viewers with the Leafs on Saturday night.
“That’s a great number,” said Moore. “People tell me millennials are hard to reach. But the No. 1 show for millennials in Canada is Hockey Night in Canada.”
TSN is reporting a similar rise with regional Leafs audiences at 754,000, a46 per cent increase from last year’s average.