Many fans living outside of the Maple Leafs viewing era will have to learn a brand new system with different functionally as NHL.TV pivots to league rightsholders.
If you wanted to watch an NHL game outside of your team’s home market and you didn’t have cable, NHL Live was your main option.
Beginning this season, much of that is going to depend on where you live. And for hockey fans inside Canada or the United States, that means signing up for a new tier of Sportsnet Now or ESPN+.
Specifically, if you are a Toronto Maple Leafs fan wanting to watch all 82 regular season games in Canada, but you live outside of the local regional viewing era, you have to sign up for Sportsnet Now Premium. On the surface, the $34.99 option (or $249.99 for an annual pass) gives you more than just the local and out of market NHL games as it comes with many other Sportsnet offerings. But what it won’t do is give you the same experience as watching those games on NHL.TV.
The way you will watch archived games and different feeds will change.
“Features that will not be available for the 2022-23 NHL season on SN NOW include home and away broadcasts for every game,” an F.A.Q. page on Sportsnet also confirms.
To the casual fan, these differences may not be a deal breaker, but considering this premium offering is targeted for sports enthusiasts, hockey fans who enjoyed seeing another angle or perspective may feel a bit shortchanged.
Under NHL Live, you could watch archived games as far back as the 2014-15 season. Sportsnet confirmed that will also not be available and archived games will be only be available from this upcoming season.
But what about the 26 Maple Leafs games carried by rival TSN? Surely you’ll be able to watch those games back if you missed it and live outside of the viewing area?
Nope.
“Only the games that air live on SN NOW will be available to replay,” a rep confirmed.
These are very specific issues tied to only a certain sect of fans but there is now doubt going to be an adjustment period. And this issue isn’t limited to just the NHL and its partners.
As new TV rights deals get brokered, functionality can kind of get lost along the way. When WWE sold the rights to their in-house WWE Network to NBC’s Peacock in the United States, fans were upset but the reduced functionality of the product at launch. During Peacock’s first big WWE live event, fans were unable to start a recording from the beginning while it was already in progress.
Much of their back catalog was also missing. But both issues eventually got rectified.
But the Maple Leafs are a unique case here with two Canadian telecom giants that co-own the franchise, yet one of them owns the domestic rights to national broadcasts. Living outside of Canada, this won’t be as strong of an issue, but it’s sure to get interesting on Oct. 13 when TSN carries Toronto’s home opener against the Washington Capitals.