The NHL announced on Tuesday that it was taking over the production of local telecasts for at least four clubs starting this September.

As of now, the Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Minnesota Wild, and St. Louis Blues are turning over the productions, which are being centralized for ease of operation. They're doing so because their previous television carrier, the Main Street Sports Group, which operated the Bally Sports channels, which then became the FanDuel Sports Network, is shutting down.

The NHL also made it clear that other clubs may be added to that list ahead of the 2026-27 season

With that, the Anaheim Ducks reportedly decided that they would terminate their agreement with their own streaming partner, Victory+, which also shows Dallas Stars games.

Fans, understandably, seem skeptical.

A quick look at the social media chatter around this announcement seems to be focused, in particular, on a quote from NHL president of events and content Steve Mayer.

 "We want to make sure that the Minnesota Wild are talking about the NHL, the stars of the league," Mayer said to the Sports Business Journal. "Many times, we find that these broadcasts are local in nature. We’re going to try to nationalize them a bit."

If you're a Blues fan, for example, you don't want to hear about Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid. You want to hear about why the Blues' third line is actually one of the best third lines in the league. Local broadcasts are popular specifically because they talk about the team the local fans like, almost always in glowing terms.

The idea of seeing a highlight involving a team you don't care for when they could be talking about your team's backup goalie is anathema to what has long been the NHL fan experience.

But from the NHL's point of view, this is only a good thing, and if fans can be a little open-minded — or at least slowly get used to it over the course of a season — then there's a real opportunity to grow the game.

Think about the most popular sports in North America, and consider how they present their national broadcasts. For the NFL, there's no local broadcast for the Miami Dolphins or anyone else. Miami get the focused local broadcast, but the halftime shows consequently don't focus on the Miami game any more than they do for fixtures around the league.

Some don't like that, but probably used to it by now.

Also, if the NHL is centralizing the pre-game and post-game shows and the intermission segments, they're pointedly not doing that for your local in-game broadcasts.

American fans don't have to like that kind of centralized approach, but this is more or less what all the Canadian broadcasters do for much of the week, and certainly for Hockey Night in Canada.

Sportsnet might be showing three different games at once on a Saturday night, but all those crews are throwing back to a centralized studio where they're not talking specifically about the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Ottawa Senators, but taking a more nationwide view of things.

That means people watching the HNIC broadcast are getting a steady diet of Habs highlights in addition to discussion of something McDavid got up to or what the Winnipeg Jets might do with their roster.

In that way, it might even make fans in the four-plus cities with this new arrangement more likely to shed the parochialism that dominates the NHL. Most hockey fans are probably diehard supporters of their own teams, but aren't too in touch with others around the league.

However, by making sure the central broadcast is talking about the game you're watching, as well as the games you probably aren't watching, they increase the likelihood that you see a highlight of Logan Cooley scoring a beautiful goal. That may microscopically increase the chances of someone tuning into part of a Utah Mammoth game. If nothing else, it makes you more aware of, as Mayer said, who the stars are in the league, and that's growing the game.

Plus, this decision is the NHL keeping up with the times. The SBJ points out that MLB went from producing zero local broadcasts in 2022 to now producing 14, almost half the league. The NBA plans to follow suit in time for the 2027-28 season.

The collapse of these regional sports networks puts a lot of teams, and more importantly, their fans, in a serious bind, so investing several million dollars in this kind of effort only makes sense for the league, the teams, and the fans.

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