The Best Way To Stream The NHL Playoffs Is Dead

The NHL playoffs’ best-kept secret was that anyone with a Canadian IP address could easily stream CBC’s broadcasts—one or two games on most nights. To view their back catalogue of shows, or to watch a variety of local stations, one needed to create an account on the CBC website. But if the site recognized you as a fellow Canuck, whether it was because you were in Canada or using a VPN, it would freely give you whatever was live on its Ottawa channel (the capital of Canada!).

I’m using the past tense here because this little gift of public television has been crushed by the Rogers Communications monolith. On Wednesday, without warning, users of the CBC Gem streaming service found themselves locked out of the Bruins-Panthers and Oilers-Canucks doubleheader. CBC put this on its website to explain:

NHL playoffs will not be available on CBC Gem, however viewers can still tune into CBC Television or stream on Sportsnet+ to watch the games.

Why isn’t CBC streaming the Playoffs on CBC Gem? 
While we were pleased to be able to offer NHL games to hockey fans this season through an agreement with Rogers Sportsnet, the national rightsholder for NHL hockey, CBC no longer has access to streaming any of the Playoff games. 

Contrary to occasional misconceptions (sometimes encouraged by me), I am not Canadian. But I grew up watching CBC’s hockey coverage because it’s available in areas near the border, like Metro Detroit. While it’s hard to talk about the whole of its history without also noting that its most famous segment, “Coach’s Corner,” ended in ultimate embarrassment for all involved, I can very confidently proclaim the Canadian broadcasts’ superiority to what’s currently available on American TV. The importance of studio chatterboxes is greater in hockey than in other sports because it essentially has two halftimes, and up north they (especially Kevin Bieksa) do a good job providing analysis that is both friendly and intelligent. This bit about the placement of the doors on the Nashville arena’s benches is a great example of something I absolutely never would have thought about before but can now carry with me for future Preds games.

On the other hand, ESPN, which has never prioritized hockey, maintains a distance from the sport that makes it feel more like hired babysitter than parent, and the Turner studio segments are an unbearable testosterone overdose. But that’s not where the differences stop. The very beginning of a Canadian playoff broadcast, especially…