‘Hockey Night in Canada’ won’t return to CBC when new Rogers deal with NHL begins

The CBC logo is projected onto a screen in Toronto on May 29, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana Martin

“Hockey Night in Canada,” a program that has been part of the national fabric for nearly 75 years on CBC television, will not return to the public broadcaster next season.

A sub-licensing agreement between Rogers Communications and the CBC that allowed HNIC to air on the network expired at the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs. 

The two sides did not extend the partnership for the 2026-27 campaign, the first year of Rogers’ 12-year, $11-billion broadcast rights deal with the National Hockey League. The CBC previously aired national games on Saturdays along with all four playoff rounds each year.

“After a successful 12-year partnership, Sportsnet and CBC today announced the public broadcaster will no longer carry NHL broadcasts after the current season as it moves forward with a new sports programming strategy following the unprecedented success of the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games,” Sportsnet and the CBC said Tuesday in a joint statement.

“Watching hockey on Saturday night is a time-honoured tradition for Canadians, and Sportsnet is privileged to continue delivering that tradition. 

“This has been a terrific partnership, and both parties look forward to continued opportunities to collaborate in the future.”

‘I can’t imagine it’

While the CBC will retain the “Hockey Night in Canada” brand, it’s the first time the program won’t be available to Canadian viewers via the public broadcaster.

“I can’t imagine it,” said Michael McKinley, author of “Hockey Night in Canada: 60 Seasons.” “I mean, I can imagine it. I don’t want to imagine it.”

In a separate statement, the CBC said it plans to launch a new Saturday night prime-time show that will “highlight Canada’s athletes as they compete at home and around the world.”

Programming will include the 2026 Commonwealth Games, women’s professional leagues and more than 20 major world championships.

The CBC, which first aired “Hockey Night in Canada” on television in 1952, has been a Saturday night mainstay for generations of hockey fans. Broadcasters like Dick Irvin, Bob Cole, Ron MacLean, Don Cherry, Dave Hodge and Foster Hewitt — to name a few — helped provide the soundtrack that Canadians would cherish.

Baby blue blazers — complete with a puck and stick HNIC logo on the jacket pocket — were as familiar as the announcers’ voices.

“The CBC brand was so dynamic and so finely created and presented that it defined a way of (the) telling of the sports story,” McKinley said in a recent interview.

Rogers rights deal

Things began to change when Rogers first secured a 12-year, $5.2-billion rights deal with the league in 2013, with many games available on the Sportsnet broadcast platform.

The telecom giant and the CBC agreed on a sub-licensing deal for English-language broadcasts of HNIC and a separate French-language deal was made with TVA.

“I think that as the national broadcaster, as the entity that is responsible for telling Canadian stories to Canada, hockey is an essential Canadian story,” McKinley said. “I think it was part of (the CBC’s) mandate to do it. They got it right for a long time.”

Under that setup, Sportsnet produced the games, retained editorial control and managed the advertising.

The CBC’s inclusion helped broaden the reach across the country. It also kept the tradition intact and allowed the broadcaster to promote some of its own programming.

The first sub-licensing deal, a four-year agreement that started with the 2014-15 season, was followed by a one-year extension.

When a seven-year sub-licensing deal was finalized ahead of the 2019-20 campaign, Rogers said it ensured “that Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts continue to reach the maximum number of Canadians every Saturday night on CBC, Sportsnet and City.”

Rogers also said that HNIC “consistently ranked among the Top 5 programs, reaching on average 7.5 million Canadians each week.”

In addition to traditional television broadcasts, HNIC games were available via the CBC website, apps and other Rogers/Sportsnet platforms.

Rogers agreed to a different sub-licensing deal a few years ago with Amazon Prime Video. That two-season agreement, which expired this spring, allowed the outlet to stream games on Monday nights across Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2026.

By Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press