The branding was previously used by NBC on Sunday afternoons, beginning at the weekend of the NFL Conference Championship games when it held NHL broadcast rights between the 2005–06 and 2020–21 seasons.
[2][3] Since then, ABC has typically aired one game per weekend, usually on Saturday afternoons, beginning in February.
[6][3][7][8] ABC Hockey Saturday as is would be called would debut on November 26, 2021 with the Thanksgiving Showdown between the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins.
[16][17][18][19] NBC correctly switched the final minutes of the 2018 NHL Stadium Series to its sister network NBCSN (except for viewers in the Washington D.C. market) at 11 p.m. Eastern Time after play stoppage due to the power outage delay.
For this season only, Brian Boucher replaced Pierre McGuire on the lead broadcast team with Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk.
The Pittsburgh Penguins originally had six network television appearances during that season (for the first time since the 2011–12 season), however, due to the cancellation of their final two network TV appearances (the Washington-Pittsburgh match-up on March 22 and the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia match-up on March 29) because of the coronavirus pandemic, they reduced to four[22][23] as the games are postponed due to the pandemic, in which the rest of the regular season was paused indefinitely due to the pandemic.
[32][33][34][35][36][37][38] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the start of the 2020–21 NHL season has been delayed to January 13, 2021, and all teams would play a 56-game division-only schedule with the NHL temporarily realigning divisions to minimize travel as much as possible, with all seven Canadian teams playing one division due to COVID-19 cross-border travel restrictions imposed by the Government of Canada.
[41] This season, ABC took over as the national over-the-air broadcaster for the NHL as part of a seven-year multiplatform deal with ESPN.
All games were simulcast on ESPN+, and featured a stats-based IceCast alternate broadcast, excluding the Thanksgiving Showdown.
Like last season, all games were simulcast on ESPN+, and featured a separate Star Watch, Puck Possesser, or All-12 alternate broadcast.