Ice Hockey

3/6/2026 |  NHL sees early bump for post-Olympic slate (Sports Media Watch) It is still too early to tell whether the NHL will draft off of the momentum from the Olympic Games, but the early returns were promising.
NHL games averaged 603,000 viewers across the first eight telecasts on ABC, ESPN and TNT following the league’s Olympic break, up 23% from the league’s pre-Olympic average. Last season, NHL viewership rose 5% over the two months following the midseason “Four Nations Face-Off,” an increase small enough to be explained fully by Nielsen methodological changes.

3/2/2026 |  Knight delivers joke during ‘SNL’ appearance featuring US men and women hockey gold medal winners (Associated Press (AP)) This time it was Hilary Knight’s turn to provide a big laugh — with an assist from the “Saturday Night Live” writers — in the wake of a weeklong dust-up involving the United States women and men’s Olympic gold medal-winning hockey teams.
Knight, the U.S. women’s captain, along with teammate Megan Keller and men’s team brothers Jack and Quinn Hughes, made a surprise appearance during “Heated Rivalry” star Connor Storrie’s opening monologue on “SNL” on Saturday night.

2/25/2026 |  Hughes’ OT goal for Team USA vs Canada in Olympic final averages 26M live viewers on NBC, Peacock (Associated Press (AP)) Jack Hughes’ overtime goal, which gave the United States its first Olympic gold medal in men’s hockey since 1980, drew an average audience of 26 million viewers on NBC and Peacock in the U.S., according to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings and Adobe Analytics digital data.

2/25/2026 |  US men’s hockey team feted at State of the Union; Trump says women’s team will be honored ‘soon’ (Associated Press (AP)) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team visited President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday afternoon and later received about a two-minute bipartisan standing ovation during his State of the Union address that night.

2/25/2026 |  US men’s hockey team feted at State of the Union; Trump says women’s team will be honored ‘soon’ (Associated Press (AP)) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team visited President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday afternoon and later received about a two-minute bipartisan standing ovation during his State of the Union address that night.