Most of the games this season for regional NHL teams will be available.
Hockey finally is back, the opening of the NHL season Wednesday night coming three months later than normal, and there is some good news for fans in the Capital Region’s fragmented market.
Despite the NHL’S shortened schedule, the area will have 250 regular-season games on TV — not including those on the NHL Network — and all telecasts involving the Rangers, Islanders, Devils and Sabres will be available.
As most longtime area fans know, the Capital Region is designated as a Buffalo market, which allows regional sports networks MSG and MSG+ to send all Sabres games here but a limited number of those featuring the Rangers, Islanders and Devils. The percentage of Rangers telecasts available has improved in recent years, but for the Islanders and Devils, the number is barely more than half, including national telecasts.
The no-blackout situation may be a one-year deal, as the NHL’S national television contracts expire after this season. The league will be looking for a significant bump in fees, and the national rightsholder will have an interest in how regional sports network telecasts are dispersed.
For now, the new schedule alleviates the frustration that area fans of New York’s metropolitan teams have felt for the past couple of decades. There are a few cases where an MSG telecast is blacked out, but in all of those instances the game will be available
on the opponent’s feed.
The new NHL schedule is unique in that all regular-season games will be played within the division. That means that 78 percent of the telecasts in the Capital Region will be in the realigned East Division (Boston, Buffalo, New Jersey, N.Y. Islanders, N.Y. Rangers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington).
Even Boston fans can rejoice. Now tucked into a division with the metro teams, the Bruins will have 39 of their 56 games (70 percent) available. Last year it was 22 of 80 (28 percent).
Here is the number of telecasts scheduled for each of the NHL’S 31 teams:
A East: Boston 39, Buffalo 56, New Jersey 56, N.Y. Islanders 56, N.Y. Rangers 56, Philadelphia 39, Pittsburgh 42, Washington 42
A Central: Carolina 3, Chicago 10, Columbus 4, Dallas 4, Detroit 10, Florida
The full NHL television schedule at blog.timesunion.com/sportsmedia
1, Nashville 4, Tampa Bay 8
A West: Anaheim 5, Arizona 2, Colorado 9, Los Angeles 8, Minnesota 6, San Jose 3, St. Louis 7, Vegas 10
A North: Calgary 1, Edmonton 4, Montreal 2, Ottawa 1, Toronto 2, Vancouver 1, Winnipeg 1
Fans of Canadian teams are out of luck. Only six games, all on NBCSN, are scheduled, although NHL Network viewers will get many more. The seven Canadian teams have been lumped into one division because of COVID -19 regulations around entering and leaving Canada.