Watching hockey in 2026-27.

The details below are only as current as the announcements they come from, and each one is dated. We do not quote subscription or ticket prices. Check the broadcaster or league directly before you plan around a game.

NHL in the United States

NHL.com's schedule release names two national partners for 2026-27: The Walt Disney Company, through ESPN and ABC, and TNT Sports, through TNT with streaming on HBO Max.

• ESPN's share. ESPN's press release of 26 August 2026 lists 100 exclusive regular-season games: 53 on ESPN and ABC, and 47 streaming on ESPN+, Disney+ and Hulu. ESPN platforms also carry first- and second-round playoff series and one conference final in 2027.
• The Stanley Cup Final. NHL.com says the 2027 Final will be shown exclusively on TNT in the United States.
• Opening week. Opening night, 29 September 2026, was an ESPN tripleheader, and TNT's first games were on 30 September.
• Out-of-market games. ESPN says more than 1,050 games are available to fans outside their team's home area through NHL Power Play on the ESPN App. The Action Network reports that NHL.TV is no longer the U.S. out-of-market service and that attempts to stream there redirect to ESPN+; we could not confirm when that change happened.
• Local games. Local rights are handled team by team. NHL.com gives one example: from 2026-27, MSG Networks' Buffalo Sabres games stream on DAZN inside the team's home territory, while fans outside it use ESPN+.

NHL in Canada

• Sportsnet. NHL.com names Sportsnet as the Canadian national broadcaster for 2026-27, and says it will show the 2027 Stanley Cup Final exclusively in Canada. The Hockey News reports that Rogers announced a new 12-year exclusive NHL rights agreement on 2 April 2025, covering television, digital and streaming, and the Stanley Cup Final.
• Opening night aired as a doubleheader on Sportsnet.
• Hockey Night in Canada. The Hockey News reported on 16 June 2026 that the programme no longer airs on CBC, with the end of the 12-season CBC and Sportsnet partnership. It did not say where the programme now airs, and we have not found that in another source.
• A point to note on CBC. Wikipedia lists the June 2026 Final as carried on Sportsnet with a CBC simulcast, while The Hockey News reported the partnership had ended. Both can be true if it ended after the 2025-26 season, but we have not confirmed that.
• French-language coverage. TVA Sports carried the 2026 Final in French, according to Wikipedia. We could not confirm its role in 2026-27.

PWHL

The PWHL season opens on 5 December 2026. The league announced on 9 September 2026 that Scripps Sports is its first season-long national U.S. television partner. ION airs a Saturday Game of the Week and is the exclusive U.S. home of the Walter Cup Finals, and the free Scripps Sports Network stream carries two games a week. The league says every game also streams on its YouTube channel and thePWHL.com for viewers in the U.S. and outside Canada. We did not find the 2026-27 Canadian broadcasters in the sources we read. More on the league is on the PWHL page.

International events

We have not confirmed broadcast rights for the 2026 Women's World Championship in November, the 2027 World Juniors or the 2027 men's World Championship from a source we could read. The dates of the first two are on the World Championships and World Juniors pages.

Why games end differently

If you watch both NHL and international hockey, you will see the same tied game settled in different ways. Here is how the two current rulebooks compare.

One more detail for the scoreboard: under NHL Rule 84.4, a team that wins a shootout is credited with one more goal than its opponent in the final score, however many shootout goals were scored, and the scorer of the deciding shootout goal is not credited with a goal in his personal statistics. For the basics of play, see how hockey works and the glossary.