A little over one month before the start of the NHL regular season, the league announced the games that’ll appear on their US TV partners during the 2026-27 campaign. With that, we know now the games that will be broadcast nationally in some form for the Hurricanes:
In case you are having trouble seeing the games, they are:
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Tuesday 9/29 vs. Florida, 5 PM, ESPN
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Tuesday 10/27 vs. Boston, 8 PM, ESPN
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Thursday 1/28, vs NY Islanders, 6:30 PM, TNT
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Tuesday, 2/9 vs Colorado, 7:30 PM, ESPN+, Disney+, Hulu
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Sunday, 2/21 vs NY Rangers, 1 PM, TNT
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Tuesday, 2/23 at New Jersey, 7:30 PM, ESPN+, Disney+, Hulu
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Tuesday, 3/9 at Minnesota, 8 PM, ESPN+, Disney+, Hulu
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Tuesday, 3/16 at Anaheim, 10:30 PM, ESPN+, Disney+, Hulu
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Tuesday, 3/30 at NY Islanders, 7:30 PM, ESPN+, Disney+, Hulu
A few thoughts:
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While there is no ABC game for the Hurricanes this year, one could argue this is the biggest showcase of a schedule they’ve had—befitting an American team that won the Stanley Cup. They are on national televsion two more times this season than last, and last year they didn’t appear on the “proper” ESPN or ABC at all until the playoffs. A similar dynamic happened in previous seasons although they did get a Saturday game on ABC. This season, they not only will appear on Opening Night, they’ll fill a Tuesday Night slot against the Bruins before ESPN forgets the NHL exists again with the NBA and NCAA basketball seasons starting up.
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They also are scheduled to appear on TNT one more time this season versus last, three of those games being in Raleigh. Clearly the effect of the NHL on TNT crew spending time in Raleighwood during the Eastern Conference Finals and actually experiencing the atmosphere.
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They will go two months between national appearances as the Pre-Thanksgiving game against Tampa will be in until they are shown against the Islanders. That’s also their only January appearance, but February—despite being the month that starts with their mandated week off—will have the most games broadcast out with four.
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I truly can’t recall the last time their game against a west coast team was on the national broadcast. With the continued issues that the Anaheim Ducks have had with their contracts, that should be an interesting game by the time it comes around in the middle of March. The Pacific Division is probably going to be just as—we’ll say rough—as last season but that’s a “coming down the stretch” game for Carolina, so who knows what we’ll see
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Clearly the national broadcasters love Matthew Schaefer, but it’s odd that of the 12 nationally broadcast games, 25% of them are against the Islanders. In fact, remember that you play each in-division opponent a total of four times in a season—it’s back to that with the move to 84 games—and this means only one Islanders game will be on local broadcast. On the Isles’ side, a full 33% of their national games are against the Hurricanes.
In case you were wondering how the national broadcast choices look for the Hurricanes compared to the rest of the league:
Twelve teams have more national appearances than the Canes, and they are tied with the Devils. The teams ahead of the Canes really aren’t surprising because of their history of drawing eyeballs and the storylines they bring into the season. That still doesn’t excuse the car wreck in Detroit and the, at this point, annual tire fire in Chicago getting that many national broadcasts—but at this point in the national TV contracts we basically know who the networks like showing.
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If you’re looking at this and wondering, “Great, what about the other 72 games?” Well, we still don’t know. Logic would dictate that in this age of spacing news out, that very soon the Canes will make the big announcement about their local broadcast plans with the announced Canes Network. They still have over a month before the first local broadcast—remember preseason games are usually just broadcast on the website or using the feed of the home teams’ jumbotron—but with national schedule now set and the Hurricanes knowing exactly which games they are responsible for, we should expect that announcement soon.
