Montreal was the most recent Canadian team to play in the Finals (2021). Before that it was Vancouver in 2011. Canadian teams have not had much success in the playoffs in quite a while.
My point is that the Canadian viewership of the Stanley Cup playoffs is generally not nearly as massive without Canadian teams as it would be otherwise.
Correction: Without the Maple Leafs or Canadiens, the only two Canadian teams with significant national followings. You could make the same generalization about World Series without the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cardinals or Cubs, or NBA finals without similar "marquee" teams. Watch the numbers there crater if the final turns out to be Denver vs. Miami rather than LA Lakers vs. Boston.
I'm told that, during regular season play, the Florida Panther's arena in Ft. Lauderdale is usually nearly 1/2 full of fans from the opposing team. The first reason is that retirees from up north who've moved to FL will show up to the arena down there when their team is playing to cheer them on. The second reason is, because the FL Panthers really don't bring in much of a crowd unless they're in the playoffs and winning (as they happen to be right now), tickets to see regular season games in FL are usually MUCH cheaper than it costs to watch games in arenas up in the northeast where hockey is more popular and the crowds tend to love their teams, win or lose. Pittsburgh Penguins fans, for instance, can take a cheap flight on Spirit or Southwest to Florida, share the cost of a decent hotel and get really excellent seats close to the rink, and depending on the flight, hotel and aftermarket ticket deals they can find, it doesn't cost them much more than nose-bleed seats would cost them to see a game in their home arena.
Have you seen the list from 2011? All seven games of the Stanley Cup Final made the top 10 of that year due to the participation of the Vancouver Canucks.
Been live is they can go to Game to.
How many people are going to spend time making up inaccuracies on wikipedia about how many Canadians watch the stanley cup?
I agree with that.
And why should the viewers care about that?
About as many who spend the time making up inaccuracies on Wikipedia about the various histories of radio and television stations.
Other than a certain amount of years a DJ worked at a station, what else is there to make up about some station’s history on Wikipedia?
Hundreds of things, ranging from the date it went on the air, to power and coverage, to format history, to ratings, to power output to ownership history to former names and call letters.
Exactly. Case in point, the article for my hometown television station, KLTV. Lucille Buford was so much more to KLTV than "a member of the station's founding family". The article makes her sound like a complete afterthought. No, she was the pioneer who worked diligently to ensure a VHF television station was allocated to Tyler, Texas. She was the driving force behind broadcast community service, in both television and radio, to this area. It's just not worth the time to go through the article to correct it, by adding the necessary citations needed to show the accurate history of both it and the former radio sister, when just anyone can go behind me and change it all, without ramification, to make themselves feel like they actually know something. Some people just want to feel more important than they actually are in reality, and that's the reason why Wikipedia is chocked full of revisionist history.
A Leafs final would probably do just as well as Vegas-Florida or Dallas-Florida on American TV, given that Toronto's history of playoff futility (no Stanley Cups since 1966-67, when there were only six teams in the league), is well known to NHL fans and the novelty of the Leafs playing for a championship for the first time in over 50 years would most likely attract U.S. eyeballs. Would that be enough in dollars and cents to make up for TNT's inability to monetize the Canadian audience through advertising? Probably not.
