The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America consisting of 32 teams – 25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and is considered to be the top-ranked professional ice hockey league in the world, with players from 17 countries as of the 2023–24 season. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) also views the Stanley Cup as one of the "most important championships available to the sport". The NHL is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.
Sportsnet is a Canadian English-language discretionary sports specialty channel owned by Rogers Sports & Media. It was established in 1998 as CTV Sportsnet, a joint venture between CTV, Liberty Media, and Rogers Media. CTV parent Bell Globemedia then was required to divest its stake in the network following its 2001 acquisition of competing network TSN. Rogers then became the sole owner of Sportsnet in 2004 after it bought the remaining minority stake that was held by Fox.
The Seattle Metropolitans were a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle, Washington, playing in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) from 1915 to 1924. During their nine seasons, the Metropolitans were the PCHA's most successful franchise, as they went 112–96–2 in their nine years as a franchise. The Metropolitans also won the most regular season PCHA championships, winning five times, with Seattle finishing second on three other occasions. The Metropolitans played their home games at the 2,500 seat Seattle Ice Arena located downtown at 5th and University.
A regional sports network (RSN) in the United States and Canada is a television channel that presents sports programming to a local media market or geographical region. Such channels often focus on one or a few teams who currently play in Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer. Minor league sports, College sports, and High school sports, may also be shown on such networks and are less commonly a focus of a channel such as the Longhorn Network and a few defunct Spectrum Sports channels such as Spectrum Sports and Spectrum Sports (Wisconsin).
Root Sports Northwest, sometimes branded simply as Root Sports, is an American regional sports network owned by the Seattle Mariners. Headquartered near Seattle in the city of Bellevue, Washington, the channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events throughout the Pacific Northwest, with a focus on professional sports teams based in Seattle and Portland. It is available on cable providers throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska and nationwide on satellite via DirecTV.
National Hockey League broadcasts are held by Canadian media corporation Rogers Communications, showing on its television channel Sportsnet and other networks owned by or affiliated with its Rogers Sports & Media division, as well as the Sportsnet Radio chain under the NHL on Sportsnet brand which serves as a blanket title. Sportsnet previously held the national cable rights for NHL regular season and playoff games from 1998 to 2002.
The National Hockey League (NHL) is shown on national television in the United States and Canada. With 25 teams in the U.S. and 7 in Canada, the NHL is the only one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada that maintains separate national broadcasters in each country, each producing separate telecasts of a slate of regular season games, playoff games, and the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. The team was founded after the NHL approved a proposal by Seattle Hockey Partners to grant an expansion franchise to the city of Seattle, and the team began play during the league's 2021–22 season. They play their home games at Climate Pledge Arena.
Amazon first acquired sports rights in April 2017, when they signed a $50 million deal for the non-exclusive rights to stream portions of the NFL's Thursday Night Football games during the 2017 NFL season to Prime subscribers, replacing a previous deal with Twitter. Since then Amazon has acquired exclusive sports rights in 10 countries, including Australia, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Premier rights include the Copa do Brasil in Brazil, Ligue 1 and the French Open in France, the UEFA Champions League in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, the Premier League in the United Kingdom, the NHL's Monday Night Hockey in Canada, and Thursday Night Football in the United States.
The NHL on TNT is an American presentation of National Hockey League (NHL) games produced by TNT Sports, and televised on TNT and streamed on Max in the United States.
Ice hockey in Seattle, Washington, includes professional teams as early as 1915, such as the Seattle Metropolitans, the first United States–based team to win the Stanley Cup. The city has been represented by various teams in the iterations of the Western Hockey League (WHL) since 1944, of which the major junior Seattle Thunderbirds are the latest. Presently, the city has a National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, the Seattle Kraken, who began play in the 2021–22 season.
The 2024 NHL Winter Classic was an outdoor regular season National Hockey League (NHL) game, part of the Winter Classic series, at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington. The game was played on January 1, 2024, between the two most recent NHL expansion teams: hosts Seattle Kraken and the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights. The Kraken won 3–0 and became the first team to earn a shutout in a Winter Classic.
Monday Night Hockey is the branding used for Canadian broadcasts of National Hockey League (NHL) games on Monday nights. It was originally used for Sportsnet-produced telecasts under the Rogers Monday Night Hockey branding during the 2022–23 and 2023–24 NHL seasons. Monday Night Hockey replaced Hometown Hockey, which had aired from the 2014–15 to the 2021–22 seasons.
Aleš Stezka is a Czech professional ice hockey goaltender for the Coachella Valley Firebirds of the American Hockey League (AHL) while under contract to the Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was drafted 111th overall by the Minnesota Wild in 2015.
The 2024–25 NHL season is the ongoing 108th season of operation of the National Hockey League (NHL). The regular season started on October 4, 2024, when the Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils played the first of two games in Prague, Czech Republic, as a part of the 2024 NHL Global Series. The Stanley Cup playoffs are then planned to begin in April 2025, ending with the Stanley Cup Finals in June. This season is the first for the expansion Utah Hockey Club, who were established with the hockey assets of the Arizona Coyotes following the latter team's deactivation.
The 2024–25 Seattle Kraken season is the fourth season for the National Hockey League (NHL) franchise. They play their home games at Climate Pledge Arena.
