NHL on Fox

History

On the heels of its surprise acquisition of the television rights to the National Football League in December 1993, Fox sought deals with other major sports leagues to expand its newly created sports division, opting to go after the rights to broadcast National Hockey League (NHL) games. CBS, which had just lost its NFL package (which primarily included the rights to regular season and playoff games from the National Football Conference) to Fox, was the network's primary competitor for the NHL package, hoping to replace some of the sports programming it had lost to the upstart network.

Nevertheless, in a serious blow to the elder network, Fox outbid CBS for the NHL package as well. On September 9, 1994, the National Hockey League reached a five-year contract with Fox for the broadcast television rights to the league's games, beginning with the 1994–95 season. The network paid $155 million ($31 million annually) to televise NHL regular season and postseason games, considerably less than the $1.58 billion it paid for the NFL television rights.

NHL's initial deal with Fox was significant, as a network television contract in the United States was long thought unattainable during the presidency of John Ziegler. For 17 years after the 1975 Finals was broadcast on NBC, there would be no national over-the-air network coverage of the NHL in the U.S. (with the exception of CBS' coverage of Game 2 of the 1979 Challenge Cup and Game 6 of the 1980 Stanley Cup Finals, and NBC's coverage of the NHL All-Star Game from 1990 to 1994) and only spotty coverage on regional networks. This was due to the fact that no network was willing to commit to carrying a large number of games, in turn, providing low ratings for NHL telecasts. ABC would eventually resume broadcasting regular NHL games (on a time buy basis through ESPN) for the 1992–93 season (and continuing through the 1993–94 season, before Fox took over for the next five seasons).

Fox inaugurated its NHL coverage on April 2, 1995, towards the end of the 1994–95 regular season, with six games (between the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers; St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings; Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals; Chicago Blackhawks and Dallas Stars; Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning; and the San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks). Mike Emrick and John Davidson served as the main broadcast team for the network's national game broadcasts, while regionally distributed games were handled by a variety of announcers. For the first four years of the deal, James Brown hosted the show from the Fox Network Center in Los Angeles and Dave Maloney as analyst from the Fox Network Center studios in Los Angeles. For the fifth and final season, Suzy Kolber served as the studio host and Terry Crisp served as the studio analyst. Occasionally, active NHL players such as Mike Modano would serve as guest analysts.

FoxTrax

Fox's NHL broadcasts are perhaps best remembered for its use of FoxTrax (colloquially called the "glow puck," "smart puck" or "super puck"), a specialized ice hockey puck designed for the network's NHL telecasts, which featured internal electronics that allow its position to be tracked. It was primarily used to visually highlight the puck on-screen and display a trail when the puck was moving rapidly. The FoxTrax puck, while considered to be generally popular according to Fox Sports, generated a great deal of controversy and criticism, especially in Canada, from longtime fans of the game, and was ridiculed by comedians on both sides of the border.

Stanley Cup playoff coverage

During the first two rounds of the playoffs, two games were televised each round. Canadian viewers were upset over the apparent preference that the NHL had to Fox ahead of CBC Television in regards to the scheduling of playoff games; Montreal Gazette sports journalist Pat Hickey of the wrote that the schedule was "just another example of how the N.H.L. snubs its nose at the country that invented hockey and its fans."

All-Star Game, Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Finals

For the All-Star Game, Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Finals, the games (which were national telecasts) were hosted from the arena. The 1996 and 1997 All-Star Games were televised in prime time.

Stanley Cup Finals

Fox split coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals with ESPN. Game 1 of the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals was the first Finals game shown on network television since 1980 and the first in prime time since 1973. Games 1, 5, and 7 were usually scheduled to be televised by Fox; and Games 2, 3, 4, and 6 were set to air on ESPN. However, from 1995 to 1998, the Finals matches were all four game sweeps; the 1999 Finals ended in six games. The consequence was that – except for 1995, when Fox did televise Game 4 – the decisive game was never shown on network television. Had there been a Game 7, then Mike Emrick would have called (play-by-play), John Davidson (as color commentator), alongside Suzy Kolber (as studio host), Terry Crisp (studio analyst), and Pierre McGuire (as reporter, who would have been in the winning team's dressing room to interview players and coaches as well as hand the phone to the winning team's coach which would have allowed him to talk to President Bill Clinton). The game would have started at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, June 19, 1999 on Fox. Perhaps in recognition of this, Games 3 through 7 were always televised by ABC in the succeeding broadcast agreement between the NHL and ABC Sports/ESPN.

Game 4 of the 1995 Final was notable because not only did the New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup, but also the team's main television play-by-play announcer, Mike Emrick announced it.

Stanley Cup Finals broadcast schedules

The end of NHL on Fox

Things ended badly between Fox and the league in 1999, when the NHL announced a new television deal with ESPN that also called for sister broadcast network ABC to become the new network television partner (as previously mentioned). Fox challenged that it had not been given a chance to match the network component of the deal, but ABC ultimately prevailed.

Fox placed a bid for NHL broadcast rights when they came up for renewal in 2011, but dropped out of the running as a result of a bidding war between NBCUniversal and ESPN. The bid made by NBCUniversal (which owns NBC, Versus and USA Network) was selected by the league, in a ten-year extension of its existing broadcast contract.

Regular season

Fox televised between 2 and 11 regionally distributed games on Sunday afternoons during the regular season, where anywhere from 2 to 6 games ran concurrently. All times below are Eastern.

1995–96

1997–98

1998–99

^The Pittsburgh Penguins–New York Rangers game on April 18 (Wayne Gretzky's final game before his retirement) began on Fox.

1995

1996

Broadcast teams

Studio commentators

Reporters

Stanley Cup Finals

Game 4 of the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals drew a 4.7 rating and a 10 share. In the New York City market (on Fox owned-and-operated station WNYW), the game drew a 10.6 rating and 21 share; in Detroit (on Fox affiliate, now owned-and-operated station, WJBK), it drew a 14.1 rating and 26 share.

Fox Sports Networks owned-and-operated affiliates

Former regional rightsholders