Blackhawks rock the Stanley Cup House

Big tune in locally – and nationally

The Stanley Cup Final began Wednesday night between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins. This marks both teams’ second appearance in the last four years with the Blackhawks last appearing in 2010 and the Bruins in 2011.

The Blackhawks not only won Game 1 in a triple-overtime thriller against the Boston Bruins, they also won the Nielsens as well. The Blackhawks won 4-3 with the game-winning goal being scored at 11:59 p.m.

Without further ado, here’s the ratings results for game one of the Stanley Cup Final:

• Initially, the Bruins-Blackhawks game earned a 4.8 household overnight rating for NBC, up 100 percent from last year’s Los Angeles Kings-New Jersey Devils earned for game one. It is the highest-rated game one since 1997’s Detroit Red Wings-Philadelphia Flyers Stanley Cup Final on Fox (glowing puck and all.)
• Preliminary 18-49 numbers showed game one earning a 2.4 rating, up 140 percent from last year’s SCF final. The prelims only measure time period data, (and only measures shows within primetime) not the show itself. Thus, the data did not include the overtime periods.
• In final ratings released on Thursday, the Bruins-Blackhawks game drew 6.4 million viewers and a 3.9 overall rating, making this the most watched SCF game one since ’97. Viewership peaked at 10:15 with 7.7 million viewers. Among adults 18-49, the game drew a 2.5 rating (up 127 percent from last year’s game one) and drew a 3.5 in men 25-54.
• In Chicago, NBC-owned WMAQ-TV averaged a 25.1 household rating for game one, hitting a peak of 29.9/52 at 10:30 p.m., a 22.9/56 in adults 25-54, and a 19.4/55 in adults 18-49, during the first OT. The HH rating was up tremendously from the 16.8 game one earned in 2010, when the Blackhawks played the Flyers, but that game aired on low HUT-level Saturday night.
• Chicago was ranked second overall in household ratings in the nation’s 56 overnight metered markets, sandwiched between Boston’s WHDH (28.1) and nearby Providence’s WJAR (18.5). Buffalo’s WGRZ (8.5) and Milwaukee’s WTMJ (6.1) rounded out the top five.

The next two games of the Stanley Cup Final is on the NBC Sports Network both Saturday and Monday night. After that, the rest of the series airs on NBC.

Ratings info courtesy of Chicagoland Radio and Media, Sports Media Watch, and NBC Sports Group Box. And yes, that’s indeed the same headline yours truly used three years ago.