Oct 8, 2026
Pucks dropped on Oct. 3, the first Saturday of the NHL season, and hockey fans who tuned in to CBC at 7 pm saw no ice. For the first time since 1952, the public broadcaster gave that Saturday night slot to something else: cricket.
The games didn’t vanish. They moved to Sportsnet, and behind a paywall. Fans who want to catch every national broadcast this season now have to pay two companies — Rogers and Amazon.
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A Saturday night ritual that used to cost nothing beyond owning a TV now comes with a subscription bill. How big that bill gets depends on what and where you sign up.
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Why did CBC air cricket instead of NHL hockey?
The short version of the story is that a contract ran out. Rogers Communications, which owns Sportsnet, holds national NHL rights in Canada. Its sublicensing agreement allowed the CBC to carry Hockey Night in Canada. That agreement expired at the end of last season’s Stanley Cup playoffs. The two sides didn’t extend it into 2026-27, the first season of Rogers’ 12-year, $11-billion broadcast deal with the league.
CBC filled the slot with CBC Sports Primetime, a new Saturday show that launched Oct. 3 with the Canada Super 60 cricket league, a professional T10 tournament held at BC Place in Vancouver. Matches aired at 7 pm and 9:30 pm ET, the window that once belonged to Hockey Night’s primetime game.
For many hockey fans, cricket in that slot felt like a symbolic stick to the knees. “It’s Saturday night in Canada and the first weekend of the NHL season, and the CBC is showing the Super60 cricket league. Imagine,” one fan posted on X.
Viewers voted with their remotes. The men’s cricket match drew an overnight estimated audience of 27,000 and the women’s match about 19,000, according to veteran TV critic Bill Brioux. Sportsnet’s 7:15 pm ET national NHL game, in contrast, drew an estimated 1.45 million viewers.
CBC stands by the choice. Spokesperson Chuck Thompson told Juno News, an independent Canadian online outlet, that cricket was a strong fit for the timeslot. It’s a new Olympic sport, the event was held in Canada and it helped the network bridge from summer to winter sports.
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Hockey Night in Canada isn’t gone, though. On Dec. 5, CBC will revive the brand with eight primetime Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) games, all free to watch.
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Where does Amazon fit into the NHL deal?
Rogers carved off one night of the week. In July, Rogers and Prime Video announced a 12-year sublicensing agreement. It gives Prime exclusive Canadian rights to Wednesday night national games. That’s at least 26 regular-season games, plus two first-round and one second-round playoff series each year, only available to watch on Prime Video.
Rogers president and CEO Tony Staffieri pitched the arrangement as delivering “more national games with fewer blackouts.” Sportsnet will keep Saturday and Monday nights and the rest of the playoffs.
The catch is that a fan who wants every national game will need to pay for both services.
How much does it cost to watch the NHL in Canada now?
Sportsnet+ raised its prices in late September. The standard plan now costs $34.99 a month or $269.99 for the year. The premium plan adds more than 1,100 out-of-market games and runs $44.99 a month or $344.99 a year. Cable and satellite customers who already pay for Sportsnet must pay a $12.99 monthly add-on to stream Monday Night Hockey, unless their provider waives the fee.
If you have an Amazon Prime membership, you already have access to Prime Video, which costs $9.99 a month or $99 a year.
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Streaming every national game on Sportsnet+ standard plus Prime adds up to $368.99 a year before tax. With Sportsnet+ premium, the total is $443.99.
Is a monthly or annual subscription cheaper?
The answer depends on how far into spring and post-season you plan to watch. The regular hockey season runs about seven months, from late September into April.
- Regular season games only: seven months of Sportsnet+ standard costs $244.93, about $25 less than the annual plan
- Through the whole playoff season: nine months, into June, costs $314.91, about $45 more than paying annually
Prime follows similar math — Seven months at $9.99 costs $69.93, versus $99 for a full year. If your household already pays for Prime for shipping, the Wednesday games cost you nothing extra.
What to do now
Before you figure out where and how you’ll catch hockey this season:
- Check which of your team’s games are regional, which are national on Sportsnet and which fall on Prime Wednesdays
- Choose monthly billing if you’ll tune out after the regular season, and annual billing if you will watch the playoffs (no matter who’s playing)
- Confirm whether someone in your household already pays for Prime before you subscribe
- Call your TV provider and ask it to waive the $12.99 Monday add-on
- Set a calendar reminder to make sure you cancel monthly plans when your season ends
Fans who flipped to CBC for the Saturday opener expecting hockey and finding cricket instead will get Saturday night hockey back on the public broadcaster on Dec. 5, when the Montréal Victoire host PWHL Hamilton. It won’t be the NHL. But it will be free, and that’s now the real and only choice on Saturday nights: pay roughly $369 a year to follow the NHL, or tune in to a game CBC says offers “free access to world-class hockey.”
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Leslie Kennedy served as an editor at Thomson Reuters and for Star Media Group, followed by a number of years as a writer and editor and content manager in marketing communications, before returning to her editorial roots. She is a graduate of Humber College’s post-graduate journalism program and has been a professional writer and editor ever since.
