''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' and ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' was the branding used for

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

games that aired on NBCSN on Wednesday nights during the regular season from January 2013 to May 2021. In the 2012–13 NHL season, NBCSN rebranded their coverage of Wednesday night games as ''Wednesday Night Rivalry''. It primarily featured rivalry games, although the network has received criticism for games which do not seem to include a strong element of rivalry (such as

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

- Buffalo, and

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

) are common. NBCSN sometimes produces a Wednesday Nightcap game primarily featuring Western Conference teams immediately following their ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' game. Beginning in the 2013–14 NHL season, NBCSN aired the series ''NHL Rivals'', which looks back at the participating teams' historic rivalry, leading up to their ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' game. That same season, NBCSN promoted the games with the slogan "The Night You Love To Hate". Beginning with the

2018–19 NHL season The 2018–19 NHL season was the 102nd season of operation (101st season of play) of the National Hockey League. 31 teams competed in an 82-game regular season. The regular season began on October 3, 2018, and ended on April 6, 2019. The 2019 St ...

, NBC Sports rebranded its Wednesday night broadcasts of the NHL as ''Wednesday Night Hockey'', with the focus shifting from rivalry games to powerhouse teams and top NHL stars. The first season of ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' featured more West Coast games and a few matchups featuring Canadian teams.

Results

2012–13 season

2013–14 season

2014–15 season

TSN's Bob McKenzie and

Darren Dreger Darren Dreger (born June 13, 1968) is a Canadian sportscaster for The Sports Network, TSN, and currently serves as one of TSN's Hockey Insiders. He had previously hosted ''Leafs Lunch'' on CFMJ, CFMJ AM640 Toronto Radio. Broadcasting career After ...

begin to make appearances on Wednesday Night Rivalry as NHL insiders every pregame and first intermission.

2015–16 season

2016–17 season

2017–18 season

2018–19 season (as Wednesday Night Hockey)

As part of the new ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' format, "Inside the Glass" reporter

Pierre McGuire Regis Pierre McGuire (born August 8, 1961) is an American-Canadian ice hockey executive who last served as senior vice-president of player development for the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey League (NHL). He previously worked as a televis ...

is now assigned to work the late game of ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' doubleheaders while

Brian Boucher Brian Boucher ( ; born January 2, 1977) is an American former professional ice hockey goaltender who is a game and studio analyst on national ESPN and ABC games and also Philadelphia Flyers games on NBC Sports Philadelphia. He played 13 season ...

takes over "Inside the Glass" reporting duties for the early game alongside Mike Emrick and

Eddie Olczyk Edward Walter Olczyk Jr. (; born August 16, 1966) is a former center in the National Hockey League for 16 seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks, Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets, New York Rangers, Los Angeles Kings, and Pittsburgh Penguins. He ...

. McGuire joins the lead team of Emrick and Olczyk only during single-header ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' games. In addition,

Kathryn Tappen Kathryn Tappen (born April 9, 1981) is an American sportscaster. Tappen works on NBC Sports Group's coverage of the Notre Dame Football, '' Football Night in America'', Golf, as well as the Summer and Winter Olympic Games among others. Early li ...

replaced

Liam McHugh Liam McHugh (born ) is an American television sportscaster. He is a studio host for Turner Sports coverage of the NHL. He previously worked on NBC Sports coverage of the NHL as well as Notre Dame Fighting Irish football and '' NBC Sunday N ...

as the studio host for the first half of the season when the latter was promoted to work postgame coverage of '' Sunday Night Football''. The Toronto-Winnipeg game on October 24 marked the first-ever regular-season ''NHL on NBC'' broadcast to feature only Canadian teams and an NBC-produced broadcast (as opposed to a simulcast of a Canadian network). On February 20, Mike Tirico made his NHL announcing debut calling the Blackhawks–Red Wings game with Olczyk and Boucher.

2019–20 season (as Wednesday Night Hockey)

For this season only, Mike Emrick,

, and "Inside the Glass" reporter

will call the ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' match-up.

will appear on other broadcasts. In addition,

replaced

as the studio host for the first half of the season when the latter was promoted to work postgame coverage of Sunday Night Football. Due to the

coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identifie ...

, the NHL regular season ended on March 12.

2020–21 season (as Wednesday Night Hockey)

Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, the start of the

2020–21 NHL season The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

has been delayed to January 13, 2021, and all teams played a 56-game division-only schedule with the NHL temporarily realigning divisions to minimize travel as much as possible, with all seven Canadian teams playing one division due to COVID-19 Canada–United States border, cross-border travel restrictions imposed by the Government of Canada. NBCSN opened the season with a season-opening triple header on January 13, 2021 as part of ''Wednesday Night Hockey''. 19 different teams featured in 19 ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' matchups which will include a blend of Eastern, Western, and Canadian markets. Star players such as Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, Carey Price, David Pastrnak, Claude Giroux, and the List of first overall NHL draft picks, #1 overall pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, Alexis Lafreniere will be featured in ''Wednesday Night Hockey''. 14 out of the 19 ''Wednesday Night Hockey'' matchups will feature a team that made the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs. However, not all games will be exclusive, unlike in previous seasons. NBC did not name a presumptive lead play-by-play voice following the retirement of Mike Emrick and chose to rotate between John Forslund and Kenny Albert. Eventually, Mike Tirico was added to the rotation starting with the Bruins-Flyers game on February 3. This was the final season of NBC broadcasting NHL games before the league's new American national television contracts with NHL on ESPN, ESPN/NHL on ABC, ABC and NHL on TNT, TNT beginning with the 2021–22 NHL season, 2021–22 season. TNT has largely maintained Wednesday night as the primary night for its coverage.

Ratings

''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' has produced successful viewership for NBCSN. During 2012–13 NHL season, its inaugural season, ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' was called "the hottest new brand in sports" by ''Forbes''. It claimed six of the top eight most-watched NHL regular-season telecasts ever on NBC Sports Network and averaged 646,000 viewers. With the success of ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'', the 2012–13 NHL season was the most watched NHL season on cable in 19 years. During the 2013–14 NHL season, ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' averaged 559,000 viewers, up 26% from its average viewership of Wednesday night games during the 2011–12 NHL season (443,000). The first two seasons of ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' has recorded none games with more than 700,000 viewers as compared to four during the two seasons prior to the introduction of ''Wednesday Night Rivalry''. During the 2014–15 NHL season, NBCSN's ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' coverage averaged 565,000 viewers. NBCSN's opening night coverage of Boston Bruins, Bruins-Philadelphia Flyers, Flyers had an opening-night cable record 956,000 viewers. Seven of the 10 most-watched NHL games on NBCSN were ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' games. During the 2015–16 NHL season, ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' averaged 608,000 viewers and produced three of the 10 most-watched NHL regular-season games on NBCSN during their time as the NHL pay television carrier. NBCSN's 10-most watched games of the 2015–16 season were either ''Wednesday Night Rivalry'' or ''Sunday Night Hockey'' games.

Notes

References

{{National Hockey League rivalries 2013 American television series debuts 2021 American television series endings 2010s American television series 2020s American television series NHL on NBC National Hockey League on television, NBC NBCSN shows