For nearly as long as Canadian homes have had televisions, hockey fans have been able to spend their Saturday nights watching the country's teams on the public broadcast channel CBC. Initially a branding for CBC's radio coverage of the NHL, Hockey Night In Canada debuted on TV in 1952, and since then it's become a national institution—think Monday Night Football crossed with Jeopardy!, times two. But starting next season, the Saturday night hockey tradition will be a shell of its old self, because the games will be entirely behind a paywall. No more CBC broadcasts that you can pick up with just an antenna, or free over the internet within the country's borders. It'll be just cable and streaming games exclusively on the Rogers Media–owned Sportsnet.
It’s the end of hockey on the CBC. I know it’s business and business is the only thing that matters today but I feel bad for people, often seniors, that can only afford basic cable.
— Rick Springhetti (@rickspringhetti.bsky.social) 2026-06-16T15:44:25.554Z
This disappointing news is a long time in the making. While CBC has carried these games for generations, they've been doing so for over a decade as a kind of hanger-on while live sports rights fees zoom past the territory of the embattled budgets of public broadcasters. In 2014, Sportsnet began its multi-billion dollar contract to broadcast the NHL nationally in Canada, and in doing so they worked out a simulcast agreement with CBC for Hockey Night and their NHL playoff coverage to quiet any outcry about taking away such a beloved program. With an even more lucrative deal about to begin next season, however, there is no such reverence for the old way of watching. On Saturday nights, or during the postseason, it's now Sportsnet or bust. And while CBC is trying to positively spin the change as an opportunity for them to broadcast other sports, potentially making ad money that doesn't go straight to Rogers, I'm more than a little dubious at any implication that they're happy about their last ties to their most iconic program being severed. It feels like justifying getting dumped by saying "Well, now I can focus more on my painting."
This is big Canadian news first and foremost, but losing Hockey Night In Canada is also a huge blow to American border cities that can access CBC but have no way to get a Canadian cable channel like Sportsnet. Growing up in Michigan, I and many others found CBC's broadcasts of the NHL playoffs significantly better (and more accessible) than whatever we'd get on ESPN2 or Versus. Today, in Hockey Night's post–Don Cherry era, the difference between Canadian and American broadcasts is even more profound. While the U.S. intermission shows feature former players who seem to model themselves after Pat McAfee, trying to be memorable as walking, talking brands above all else, the Sportsnet/CBC intermission typically features a polite conversation between men and women who give the impression that they're genuinely engrossed in the game they're watching. Plus, this is the only U.S. sports broadcast that makes it worth tuning in for a game exactly at the top of the hour, because these musical intro montages are unparalleled.
To be clear, this has been the Sportsnet production team doing this work, and the presentation will likely remain available for the fans who pay for it. But CBC losing its last grip on the NHL is a depressing continuation of a long-running trend that's locking more and more sporting events behind a multitude of different paywalls. There was a beautiful simplicity to "the Stanley Cup is on channel nine" every single year, and embedded somewhere within that is an argument that sports teams are something that everyone deserves to enjoy, regardless of their ability to pay a cable bill or subscription fee. Starting next season, the NHL will almost exclusively be a product that hockey fans can purchase. It's not for anybody else.
