Why you can't watch some Blackhawks Stanley Cup games on regular TV

While Wednesday night's first game of the Stanley Cup Final will be seen on over-the-air broadcast TV, two of next week's games may prompt those without cable to clutch their radios, or scramble to their favorite local sports bar.

NBC is airing Games 1 and 2, and Games 5, 6 and 7, should the best-of-seven series go that far. But Games 3 and 4 will be shown on the NBC Sports Network, a cable channel shown in 85 million homes nationwide and distributed by major cable and satellite carriers.

Die-hard Blackhawks fans will manage to watch every second of hockey action no matter what, but casual fans who don't have cable will have to find some other way to pay attention.

It's all the result of NBC's multi-year agreement with the NHL that mandates two games of the Stanley Cup Final be on the cable network, according to an NBC Sports spokesman.

That was the case the last time the Blackhawks won the Cup in 2013, when Games 2 and 3 aired on the NBC Sports Network, and in 2010, when Games 3 and 4 aired on the network's predecessor, Versus.

Which games are selected for which days may have a lot to do with what else is on. On Saturday, for instance, NBC will be airing Game 2 at 6:15 p.m., at the conclusion of the network's coverage of the Belmont Stakes. A big audience is expected to watch American Pharoah vie for the final leg of horse racing's Triple Crown, and NBC officials hope that will serve as a good lead-in to their hockey coverage Saturday night.

Last year, 20 million people tuned in to the Belmont Stakes, when California Chrome was similarly competing for the Triple Crown.

NBC's agreement with the NHL also means there's little chance a local affiliate could pick up either of the Hawks Stanley Cup games from cable — a practice that's common during nationally televised Bears regular season games.

That means NBC viewers next Monday and Wednesday won't be watching hockey, but NBC's prime-time lineup that includes “American Ninja Warrior,” “The Island,” and “I Can Do That!”

NBC and its sister cable stations began broadcasting the NHL in 2006, and it's been since then that two Final games were on cable.

• Ratings for the Hawks on local TV have been a bonanza. Last Saturday's game on NBC-Channel 5 registered the highest ratings ever for a non-Stanley Cup Final Hawks game in the Chicago market — and the third-highest overall — with an estimated 925,000 Chicago-market households tuning in. The most watched Hawks games were the Stanley Cup-clinching games in 2010 (1.1 million households) and 2013 (just over 1 million households).

• Behind the mic for the Final is NBC's lead NHL broadcast team of Mike “Doc” Emrick on play-by-play, former Blackhawk Eddie Olczyk on color commentary, and Pierre McGuire doing analysis from ice level between the benches. Olczyk, however, is expected to miss Game 2 since he will be in Elmont, New York, for the Belmont Stakes. Olczyk, the television analyst on Blackhawks games during the regular season, is also a horse racing enthusiast and has provided analysis for NBC's coverage of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

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