On the heels of its surprise acquisition of the
television rights to the
National Football League (NFL) in December 1993,
Fox sought deals with other major sports leagues to expand its newly created sports division, opting to go after the rights to broadcast National Hockey League (NHL) games.
CBS, which had just lost its
NFL package (which primarily included the rights to regular season and playoff games from the
National Football Conference) to Fox and had also lost its
Major League Baseball and
college football rights to other networks, was Fox's primary competitor for the NHL package, hoping to replace some of the sports programming it had lost to Fox. Nevertheless, in a serious blow to CBS, Fox outbid CBS for the NHL package as well. On September 9, 1994, the NHL reached a five-year contract with Fox for the broadcast television rights to the league's games, beginning with the
1994–95 season. Fox paid
$155 million ($31 million annually) to televise NHL regular season and postseason games, considerably less than the $1.58 billion Fox paid for the NFL television rights. The NHL's initial deal with Fox was significant, as a U.S. network television contract was long thought unattainable for the league during the
presidency of
John Ziegler. For 17 years after the
1975 Final were broadcast on
NBC, there would be no national over-the-air network coverage of the NHL in the United States (except for the
1979 Challenge Cup and game six of the
1980 Stanley Cup Final on CBS, and NBC's coverage of the
NHL All-Star Game from
1990 to
1994) and only spotty coverage on regional networks. This was because no network was willing to commit to carrying a large number of games, in turn providing low ratings for NHL telecasts.
ABC would eventually resume the network broadcasting of regular NHL games (on a
time buy basis through
ESPN) for the
1992–93 season. This continued through the
1993–94 season before Fox took over for the next five seasons. Fox inaugurated its NHL coverage on April 2, 1995, toward the end of the
1994–95 regular season, with six games (between the
New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers;
St. Louis Blues and
Detroit Red Wings;
Boston Bruins and
Washington Capitals;
Chicago Blackhawks and
Dallas Stars;
Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning; and the
San Jose Sharks and
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim).
Mike Emrick and
John Davidson were the lead broadcast team, and
Joe Micheletti served as the reporter for national game broadcasts on Fox, while regionally-distributed games were handled by a variety of announcers, in addition to the trio. For the first four years of the deal,
James Brown hosted the show and
Dave Maloney was the studio analyst from the Fox Network Center studios in Los Angeles. For the fifth and final season,
Suzy Kolber served as the studio host and
Terry Crisp served as the studio analyst. Occasionally, active NHL players such as
Mike Modano would serve as guest analysts.
FoxTrax Fox's NHL broadcasts are perhaps best remembered for its use of
FoxTrax (colloquially called the "glow puck," "smart puck," or "super puck"), a specialized
ice hockey puck designed for the network's NHL telecasts which featured internal electronics that allowed its position to be tracked. It was primarily used to visually highlight the puck on-screen and display a trail when the puck was moving rapidly. The FoxTrax puck, while considered to be generally popular according to Fox Sports, generated a great deal of controversy and criticism, especially in Canada, from longtime fans of the game, and was ridiculed by comedians on both sides of the border.
Stanley Cup playoff coverage During the first two rounds of the playoffs, at least two games were aired each round and were distributed regionally, unless other series involving other scheduled games were already finished, in which case the telecast was broadcast nationally. Canadian viewers were upset over the apparent preference that the NHL had for Fox ahead of
CBC Television in regards to the scheduling of playoff games;
Montreal Gazette sports journalist Pat Hickey wrote that the schedule was "just another example of how the N.H.L. snubs its nose at the country that invented hockey and its fans."
All-Star Game, Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Finals For the
All-Star Game, Conference Finals, and
Stanley Cup Final, the games (which were national telecasts) were hosted from the arena. The 1996 and 1997 All-Star Games were televised in
prime time.
Stanley Cup Finals Fox split coverage of the
Stanley Cup Finals with
ESPN. Game 1 of the
1995 Stanley Cup Final was the first Finals game shown on network television since
1980 and the first in
prime time since
1973. Games 1, 5, and 7 were usually scheduled to be televised by Fox; and Games 2, 3, 4, and 6 were set to air on ESPN. However, from
1995 to
1998, the Finals matches were all four game sweeps; the
1999 Finals ended in six games. The consequence was that – except for 1995 when Fox did televise Game 4 – the decisive game was never shown on network television. Perhaps in recognition of this, Games 3–7 were always televised by
ABC in the succeeding broadcast agreement between the NHL and
ABC Sports/
ESPN. Game 4 of the 1995 Finals was notable because not only did the
New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup, but also the team's main television play-by-play announcer,
Mike Emrick, announced it.
KTVU, the Fox affiliate in the
San Francisco Bay Area, dropped Game 4 of the 1995 Stanley Cup Final (June 24) for a
San Francisco Giants game. The game between the Giants and
Florida Marlins in
Miami had a long rain delay. This allowed KTVU to broadcast the hockey game after all. However, the baseball game finally started before the hockey game ended. KTVU got a lot of complaints, so they re-aired the end of the hockey game the following Saturday (July 1).
The end of NHL on Fox Things ended badly between Fox and the league in 1999, when the NHL announced a new television deal with
ESPN that also called for sister broadcast network
ABC to become the new
network television partner (as previously mentioned). Fox challenged that it had not been given a chance to match the network component of the deal, but ABC ultimately prevailed. Fox placed a bid for NHL broadcast rights when they came up for renewal in 2011 but dropped out of the running as a result of a bidding war between
NBCUniversal and ESPN. The bid made by NBCUniversal (which owns
NBC,
Versus and
USA Network and, through its ownership of the
Philadelphia Flyers, a stake in the league itself) was selected by the league, in a ten-year extension of its existing broadcast contract. After
Disney acquired the entertainment unit
21st Century Fox (excluding the
main network and
sports units) in 2019, it resold the regional
Fox Sports Networks to
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which maintained the rights on some NHL teams. In 2021, Sinclair rebranded the channels as
Bally Sports. In August 2019, Fox Sports SVP/sales Mark Evans told
The Big Lead that Fox would be interested in pursuing NHL media rights when they became available. In April 2021, Fox Sports was reportedly considered a front-runner to acquire the NHL's "B" package after ABC and ESPN acquired the "A" package from NBC; the rights would ultimately go to
Turner Sports. After the bankruptcy of Bally Sports in 2023,
Bally Sports SoCal (the former Fox Sports Prime Ticket) lost the rights to the
Anaheim Ducks broadcasts and its local games moved to the Fox-owned station,
KCOP-TV, starting the
2024–25 season. ==Coverage overview==