Huge figures for football’s biggest draft prove the NFL is still the beast that can’t be beat, while the Canucks wallow in dysfunction
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Bulls-of-the-Week
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The NHL and the NBA — the two leagues going shoulder to shoulder in their respective playoffs — have both had some good television numbers to celebrate just over one week into their opening series in 2026. In Canada, two overtime games have helped the original six heritage brand of the Montreal Canadiens draw strong viewership in both English on Rogers Sportsnet and in the French language, where 1.7 million watched the Habs take on the Tampa Bay Lightning on TVA Sports. Connor McDavid continues to make the Oilers a television magnet on both sides of the border, while the NHL is basking in the glow of the two most-watched game 2s ever on cable television in the U.S. Philadelphia-Pittsburgh game 2 generated an American audience of 1.6 million while the Buffalo-Boston game 2 chalked up 1.2 million, an 83 per cent increase year-over-year for ESPN.
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Those playoff numbers come after a regular season in which the NHL had its best television ratings since 2012-2013.
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FP West: Energy Insider
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Meanwhile, the NBA had its best opening Sunday in the playoffs in 15 years — with an aggregate of 35 million viewers over four national broadcast windows; up 65 per cent year-over-year. Watch for the Canadian numbers to climb substantially if the Toronto Raptors can upset the Cavaliers in their opening round series that is 2-1 for Cleveland going into the weekend.
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Yet the biggest winner this week in the business of sport is the NFL, which was expecting to track more than 12 million American viewers for its prime time draft held Thursday. The NFL Draft was a football version of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, with more than 320,000 fans in attendance in Pittsburgh. Add up all of the NHL and NBA playoffs games on tap Thursday night — three on the ice and three on the hardwood — and the NFL still won the night on U.S. television with their off-season TV juggernaut.
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Bears-of-the-Week
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The Vancouver Canucks already have enough deep reputational wounds to heal after finishing their season 25-49-8 on 58 points, dead last among 32 teams in the NHL. That’s 14 points worse than the original six Chicago Blackhawks, the next most woeful NHL team on the planet this year. Even more painful for season ticket holders and other paying customers is the fact that the Canucks won just nine of 41 games at Rogers Arena, a franchise record for home ice futility. That’s a tough vantage point to sell tickets from when about three of every four home games send the faithful home without a W.
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Yet it gets worse. Just when the focus should be on the upside of the rebuild in general and a potential No. 1 overall draft pick in particular, the Canucks can’t seem to avoid shooting themselves in the skates, so to speak. The latest reports paint a worrisome picture of fragmentation in the front office and ownership suite. Those reports suggest that instead of an orderly transition from former general manager Patrick Alvin, the Canucks have seen not one but two and possibly three different lists being bandied about as part of the process of appointing a new GM. To say the least, that’s not your typical process in the NHL — or any North American professional sports league for that matter — and it’s hardly the kind of scuttlebutt that instils confidence that the franchise will move forward in a unified, empowered fashion.
