No More NHL on CBC: Where to Watch Hockey in Canada in 2026–27

For most of the last seventy-odd years, a Canadian Saturday night in winter followed the same script. Dinner done, kids in pyjamas, the dog on the couch, and CBC on the TV with that theme song telling the whole country it was time. You didn't need a subscription. You didn't need an app. Your grandfather watched it on rabbit ears, and so did his.

This season, that script changed, and a lot of people only found out when they turned on CBC in October and got something else. If you've been asking "Wait, where's the hockey?" you're not alone. It's the question we've been answering more than any other this fall.

So here's the full picture, in plain language: what changed, why, where every night of NHL hockey lives now, what it means for your wallet, and how to set things up so you never spend the first period hunting for the game again.

What Actually Happened to Hockey Night in Canada

Here's the background, because it explains everything else. Since 2014, Rogers has held the national NHL rights in Canada. It kept Hockey Night on CBC through a sublicensing deal: Sportsnet produced the Saturday games, and they aired on CBC alongside Sportsnet's own channels. The name, Hockey Night in Canada, has always belonged to CBC.

In 2025, Rogers renewed its national NHL deal for another twelve seasons starting in 2026–27, in a contract reported to be worth around $11 billion, according to Wikipedia's summary of the NHL on Sportsnet. Then, on June 16, 2026, CBC and Rogers jointly announced they would not renew the sublicence that put NHL games on CBC. That ended 74 years of NHL hockey on CBC Television and roughly 90 years of CBC's relationship with the league, going back to radio.

The last NHL game CBC ever aired was Game 6 of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final, when the Carolina Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights to win the Cup. The last one involving a Canadian team was the Hurricanes' Game 5 win over the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Final. The full timeline is on Hockey Night in Canada's Wikipedia page.

If you feel a bit sad reading that, you're allowed. For a lot of families, CBC on a Saturday night was hockey.

Your New NHL Week, Night by Night

The NHL is still on in Canada every night of the week. It's just spread across more places than before. Here's the 2026–27 map.

Game times and channel assignments change through the season, so always check the official NHL schedule or your team's broadcast page the week of. Now let's go through each night properly.

Saturday: Sportsnet's Saturday Night Hockey

Sportsnet replaced Hockey Night with Rogers Saturday Night Hockey, which premiered on October 3, 2026. It's still a doubleheader built around Canadian teams, and most of the faces and voices you know from Hockey Night came along with it. The theme song is different, the channel is different, but the shape of the evening is the same: an early game for the East, a late game for the West, and a lot of opinions in between.

The big catch: Sportsnet is a specialty channel, not a free over-the-air network like CBC. If you used to watch Saturday hockey with an antenna, that option is gone for the NHL.

Wednesday: Prime Video

Amazon first got a national NHL package in Canada in 2024 with Prime Monday Night Hockey. On July 28, 2026, Rogers and Amazon announced a 12-year renewal that moved Prime's games to Wednesday nights, added selected first- and second-round playoff series, and gave Prime French-language rights to most of its games, as detailed on the NHL on Prime Video page. Wednesday used to be a Sportsnet doubleheader night, so if your Wednesday habit was flipping to Sportsnet, that's the change you'll feel most.

Monday: Sportsnet+ only

With Prime gone from Mondays, Sportsnet took that night back, but with a twist: Monday Night Hockey now streams exclusively on the premium tier of Sportsnet+. It isn't on a regular Sportsnet TV channel. If you have Sportsnet through a cable package but not the premium streaming tier, Mondays are the night you'll come up empty.

The other nights: Sportsnet and regional broadcasts

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday games are split between Sportsnet's national broadcasts and regional broadcasts of individual teams. There's genuinely good news here: Sportsnet says its national schedule this season includes more than 550 games, about 35% more than last year, after removing roughly 150 regional blackouts. Fewer blackouts means fewer nights when your team is playing and your screen says "not available in your region."

Regional rights for some teams have historically sat with other broadcasters, including TSN and RDS, so where your team's non-national games land still depends on which team you follow and where you live. Your team's website lists its broadcast partners for every game.

In French: TVA Sports

TVA Sports renewed its French-language sublicence with Rogers for the full twelve years, so French national coverage stays where Québec fans expect it. Prime Video also has French-language rights to most of its Wednesday games. Our guide to French channels for Québec and bilingual homes covers how to keep French and English hockey in one place, and our Montréal and Québec City pages have more on local viewing.

What a Week of Following One Team Looks Like Now

Tables are tidy. Real life isn't. So here's an example of an ordinary November week for a fan who wants to see every game their team plays. Let's say their team has four games that week, which isn't unusual.

• Monday, home game. It's picked as the national Monday game, so it's on the premium tier of Sportsnet+. Not on Sportsnet's TV channels, not on cable. If you don't have the premium streaming tier, you're refreshing a score app.
• Wednesday, road game. It's the Prime Video game this week. Different app, different login, and on many TVs a different input or device.
• Friday, road game. A regional broadcast. Depending on your team and where you live, that could be a Sportsnet regional feed or another regional broadcaster. If you live outside the team's region, rules change again.
• Saturday, home game. Saturday Night Hockey on Sportsnet. This is the one most people expect, and the one that used to be free on CBC.

That's potentially three or four different places in a single week, before you factor in the kids wanting the PWHL on CBC on a Saturday, or the NFL on Sunday. None of it is impossible. It's just a lot of switching, logging in and remembering, and it's the main reason so many hockey households have started looking for one guide that has everything in it.

The real lesson: before the season gets busy, look at your team's schedule for the next month, write down where each game is, and make sure you can actually reach every one of those places on the TV you watch on. Finding out at 7:05 p.m. that Wednesday's game is on an app you don't have is how good evenings go sideways.

Hockey Night in Canada Lives On: The PWHL on CBC

Here's the part of the story that deserves more attention. CBC didn't retire the Hockey Night in Canada name. On September 28, 2026, it announced a partnership with the Professional Women's Hockey League to air eight Saturday-night PWHL games under the Hockey Night in Canada banner this season. The first is scheduled for Saturday, December 5, 2026, with the Montreal Victoire visiting PWHL Hamilton.

It's part of a new Saturday evening block called CBC Sports Primetime, which launched on October 3 and focuses on Canadian athletes across a range of sports. Because it's CBC, these games are free over the air and on CBC Gem. If you have young players in the house, especially girls who've grown up watching Marie-Philip Poulin score the big goals, this is worth making a Saturday tradition of its own. The league's full schedule is on the PWHL's official site.

What This Means for Different Kinds of Fans

The Saturday-night-only fan

If you only ever watched Hockey Night on CBC, this season is the biggest change. You now need access to Sportsnet for Saturday NHL games, either through a TV provider, a Sportsnet+ subscription, or a live TV service that carries the Canadian sports channels. On the bright side, if you were mostly watching for the atmosphere and the tradition, the PWHL games on CBC give you a free Saturday hockey night eight times this season.

The antenna household

This one hurts the most, and it's mostly older Canadians and rural families who feel it. Rabbit ears and a rooftop antenna used to be enough for Saturday hockey all winter. That's over for the NHL. If that's your parents or grandparents, they'll need a different setup this year, and it's worth helping them before the playoffs. A simple streaming stick and a guide with the sports channels in it is usually the easiest swap. Our streaming device buyer's guide explains what to buy, and our setup tutorial walks through it step by step.

Helping your parents or grandparents switch

If someone in your family lost their Saturday hockey this fall, here's the gentlest way we've found to fix it, usually in one Sunday visit:

1. Keep their antenna. Don't take anything away. CBC still comes in for the news, the PWHL games and everything else they're used to.
2. Add one small device. A streaming stick plugged into a spare HDMI port, set up so it starts on the live TV app. One extra button on the remote, not a whole new system.
3. Build a short favourites list. Five to ten channels: the sports channels for their team, the news they watch, maybe a movie channel. Nothing else.
4. Write it on a card. "To watch hockey: press Input, choose HDMI 2, open Favourites, pick the game." Tape it to the side table. It sounds silly. It works.
5. Leave your number and ours. If they get stuck on a Saturday night, they call you, and if you're stuck too, our support team will walk them through it as slowly as they need.

The every-game fan

If you watch your team every night, the official route now means stacking: Sportsnet for most nights, the premium tier of Sportsnet+ for Mondays, Prime Video for Wednesdays, and possibly a regional channel for some games. That's three or four separate places to look before you even think about the price. We covered the full picture for following one team in how to watch NHL games in Canada without cable, and Leafs fans have their own guide in how to watch every Maple Leafs game.

The multi-team, multi-sport household

One person follows the Oilers, someone else is a Habs fan by marriage, the kids want the PWHL, and Sunday is for football. This is where app-by-app viewing really falls apart, because no single official service carries all of it. Our sports streaming guide covers hockey, the NFL, soccer and UFC together, and our multi-screen plans let different games play on different TVs at the same time.

Fans in every Canadian market

The changes land a little differently depending on your team. For local notes on internet providers, setup and what's popular, see our pages for Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

The Money Question: What a Full NHL Season Costs Now

We're not going to quote other companies' prices, because they change often and differ by provider and promotion. Check each service's own site for today's rates. But the structure of the cost is easy to see.

Our own prices are public and in Canadian dollars: $19.99 for one month, $34.99 for three, $49.99 for six, or $79.99 for a full year, which works out to $6.67 a month on one screen. A six-month plan bought this week covers the rest of the regular season and into the playoffs. There's no contract and no auto-renewal, and you pay by Interac e-Transfer. Our article on monthly versus annual plans runs the math if you're deciding how long to go.

How to Never Miss a Puck Drop: Setup Tips for This Season

However you decide to watch, a few things make game nights smoother. These come from helping a lot of Canadian hockey households get set up.

1. Wire the TV you watch hockey on. Live sports can't buffer far ahead like a movie, so a stable connection matters more than raw speed. An ethernet cable to the main TV or streaming box fixes most mid-game hiccups.
2. Check your speed at the TV. About 15 Mbps per HD screen and 25 Mbps per 4K screen is plenty. Test at the TV with Speedtest, not next to the router. Our internet and Wi-Fi guide explains why.
3. Build a hockey favourites list. Put every channel your team might be on into one favourites group. On game night, you open the list and pick, instead of scrolling.
4. Count your screens for playoff nights. When two Canadian teams play at the same time, or the kids want the PWHL while you want the Leafs, you need more than one screen. Our multi-device guide helps you pick the right number.
5. Know your buffering fixes. If the picture stutters in overtime, it's almost always home Wi-Fi. Our nine buffering fixes solve most cases in minutes.
6. Check the device before Black Friday. Amazon's newest Fire TV models run a new system that doesn't support the usual player apps. Our Firestick guide shows how to check yours.

Before You Pay Anyone: How to Pick a Service You'll Still Like in April

Every time broadcast rights shift, a wave of new sellers shows up promising "every game, every team, forever." Some of them disappear before the trade deadline. Before you hand over money, including to us, run through this list. The full version is in our provider checklist and in what "best" actually means.

• Test during a real game. A service that's perfect at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday can fall apart at 7:15 on a Saturday. Our trial testing plan shows what to check.
• A real free trial, no card required. If they want payment details before you've seen a single channel, walk away. Ours is a free 24-hour trial.
• Canadian pricing, Canadian payment. Prices in Canadian dollars, Interac e-Transfer, and no auto-renewal.
• Support that answers. Send one question during your trial and see how fast a real person replies.
• Straight talk on the legal side. Our plain-language article on whether IPTV is legal in Canada covers it honestly.

Heading South for the Winter?

One more change worth knowing about: most Canadian streaming apps are licensed for viewing in Canada only. If you spend part of the winter in Florida, Arizona or Texas, apps that work perfectly at home often show an error the moment you cross the border. We wrote a full guide for that situation: watching Canadian TV as a snowbird, including how game times shift when you're in Arizona.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hockey Night in Canada still on CBC?

Not for the NHL. CBC and Rogers ended the arrangement after the 2026 playoffs, after 74 years of NHL games on CBC Television. CBC kept the Hockey Night in Canada name and uses it for eight Saturday-night PWHL games this season, starting December 5.

Where are Saturday night NHL games now?

On Sportsnet, under the name Saturday Night Hockey, which premiered on October 3, 2026. It's still a doubleheader built around Canadian teams.

Where are Wednesday night games?

On Prime Video, which moved its national package from Mondays to Wednesdays this season and also has selected first- and second-round playoff series.

What happened to Monday Night Hockey?

It's back with Sportsnet, but it streams only on the premium tier of Sportsnet+, not on a regular TV channel.

Can I still watch Saturday hockey free with an antenna?

Not NHL games. You can still watch CBC's PWHL games on Hockey Night in Canada for free over the air or on CBC Gem.

What's the simplest way to follow my team all season?

Either combine the official services (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+ premium, Prime Video and possibly a regional channel) or use one live TV service with Canadian and US sports channels in a single guide. Whichever you choose, test it during a real game before paying. If you're unsure, ask us and we'll tell you honestly whether we're a good fit for your team.

The tradition changed, but the game didn't. It's still Saturday night, it's still cold outside, and somewhere in Canada someone is still yelling at the TV about a missed call. You just need to know which channel to yell at now.