Courtesy Chicago Sun Times

(June 2, 2010) Count NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5 leader Larry Wert among those who would love to see the Stanley Cup finals go on forever. The first two games of the finals pitting the Chicago Blackhawks against the Philadelphia Flyers pulled nothing short of phenomenal ratings in the Chicago market on WMAQ. Especially considering this was hockey — not football or basketball. The match-up is proving to be popular nationally too.

The first game Saturday night drew a 16.8 overnight Nielsen rating locally. In other words, TV sets in 588,000 households in Chicago were tuned to the first Stanley Cup finals game. But the second game Monday night easily trumped the impressive Saturday night results with a 25.1 overnight rating. That means the hockey game was on in 878,000 Chicago area households. Huge. ABC’s “Bachelorette,” the next highest-rated show Monday night, could do no better than a 4.8 rating in the Chicago market.

“This is more remarkable than an Olympic number or a Chicago Bears number because it is history in the making,” said Wert. “A hockey game never saw this kind of embrace by its home city; the fan base just grew exponentially,” added Wert.

Nationally, 3.2 million households tuned in Saturday night — a 2.8 rating — the best showing for a Stanley Cup finals opening game since 1999, when a Dallas-Buffalo game scored a 3.7 rating. Saturday night’s national hockey rating was 12 percent higher than the 2009 Stanley Cup finals opening game between Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Monday night’s game reached 4.7 million households nationally — a 4.1 rating — the highest national TV rating ever for a second game of the Stanley Cup finals.

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