It wasn’t too far into the 2016-17 NHL season before Scott Moore was confident hockey ratings would take a turn for the better for Rogers and Sportsnet.

“After Auston Matthews’ third goal,” said Moore, the president of Sportsnet and NHL Properties at Rogers Media. “I didn’t want to put too much emphasis on that first night, but it was like somebody turned the light on.”

Matthews scored an eye-popping four goals in the season opener, with his third coming 1:25 into the second period of his first game. The Leafs, the league and Rogers — which was entering the third year of a 12-year deal as Canada’s national hockey broadcaster — had a star on their hands. The world’s biggest market was reborn. Not just because of Matthews but because of a slate of impressive rookies, including fellow forwards Mitch Marner and William Nylander.

There were similar re-awakenings in Edmonton, with a new arena and a healthy and determined Connor McDavid, and in Montreal, with goaltender Carey Price back. Calgary and Ottawa were good, too.

If there was a disappointing moment for Moore, it was that the Stanley Cup ended in six games.

“There was no Game 7,” Moore said. “Overall, I would say, we’re very pleased with the year. Over the course of a 12-year deal, there will be ups and downs. This year is up for sure.”

Hockey Night in Canada’s ratings were up 11 per cent from the 2015-16 season to an average audience of 1.8 million viewers for the 7 p.m. game, and up six per cent (560,000 viewers) for the late game. Sunday’s Hometown Hockey was up 22 per cent (511,000 viewers).

And Sportsnet’s regional Leafs broadcasts were up 32 per cent, to an average audience of 511,000. That gets them back to roughly where they were in 2014-15. TSN’s Leafs broadcasts were up 20 per cent.

The Stanley Cup playoffs seemed to do very well with the viewing public.

In Canada:

The Pittsburgh-Nashville final had an average minute audience of 2.67 million, 18 per cent higher than 2016.

Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final between Ottawa and Pittsburgh was the most watched game of the playoffs, with an average of 4.29 million viewers.

The playoffs delivered an overall average minute audience of 1.61 million Canadians, up 94 per cent from last year.

In the United States:

Despite neither Nashville (29th) nor Pittsburgh (23rd) being a top-20 TV market, the final on NBC/NBCSN averaged 4.762 million viewers, making it the most-watched final on record without an Original Six team. Viewership was up 19 per cent over 2016.

Online, the playoffs on NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app were the most-streamed in history, delivering more than a half-billion live minutes (527.4 million, up 31 per cent, and two million unique visitors, up 22 per cent.

In Canada, livestreaming of the playoffs was up 164 per cent from this time last year.

“The best part is it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an isolated year,” Moore said.

Interest this season followed a year of doom and gloom in Canada, when none of the country’s seven teams made the playoffs. Interest, reflected in terrible ratings, was at a record low. Bleeding money, Rogers rethought its hockey broadcast, letting go dozens of on-air and behind-the-scenes talent. Most notably, Ron MacLean was back as host of Hockey Night in Canada after George Stroumboulopoulos’s two-year run.

“It was incredibly tough to go through what we went through last summer,” Moore said. “We had a difficult year from a ratings standpoint, and from a perception standpoint. A year later, we’re into a different atmosphere.”

Now, with good times back for the foreseeable future, it appears whatever changes Sportsnet makes to its hockey broadcasts will be only of the tweaking variety. Nothing major. No massive hirings. No massive firings.

“We were pleased with the chemistry we had on Saturday nights, with Ron (MacLean), Nick (Kypreos), Elliotte (Friedman) and Kelly (Hrudey). We had a consistency of presentation,” Moore said. “There are always some tweaks you make, but I don’t expect those tweaks to be major or monumental.

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“I would expect what people saw this year will be, with very few exceptions, what they see next year.”

There is one noteworthy change on the horizon. TSN has scooped up English language rights to broadcast the Montreal Canadiens regionally. That gives the former hockey powerhouse broadcaster rights to four teams for regional broadcasts, the others being Winnipeg, Ottawa and Toronto (which it shares with Sportsnet).

Rogers continues to have national broadcast rights for all teams, and exclusive regional rights to Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

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