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This story has been updated for the 2019-20 season.

Sportsnet, RDS, TSN, the Canadiens, Rogers and the National Hockey League have all heard your complaints about regional hockey blackouts on TV. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough for the league to change its policy, so if you don’t live in the Canadiens broadcast region (the Ottawa valley and everywhere east of that), you’re once again only going to have access to 32 Canadiens games this season on TV — unless you want to shell out some extra cash.

Year 6 of Rogers’s 12-year, $5.2-billion NHL rights deal is pretty well the same as Year 5, with rights to Canadiens games shared between Sportsnet and TSN in English and TVA Sports and RDS in French.

We don’t have the power to change the policy, but we’ll try to do our best here to explain it and give you options.

Why are hockey games blacked out?

National Hockey League games are split into two categories: national and regional (and for added confusion, one game can be in separate categories for English Canadian, French Canadian and U.S. broadcasts). National games, which include all Saturday night games, all playoff games and major events like the Winter Classic and All-Star Game, are sold by the league to a national rights-holder. This is what Rogers bought before reselling the French rights to TVA Sports.