The eyes of the hockey world were fixed on the Golden Knights during their 6-4 win over Washington to open the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night at T-Mobile Arena.
So were the eyes of Las Vegas.
The game drew a local rating of 28.1 in Las Vegas, which is the highest ever for a Golden Knights game in the market. It crushed the previous record of 17.9 for the team’s win over Winnipeg in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals.
The game held a 44 share in Las Vegas, meaning nearly half of the televisions in use were tuned to the Golden Knights game.
It was also the highest-rated game ever on an NBC network in the Washington, D.C., market with a rating of 16.0.
Nationally, the game was the highest rated Game 1 of a series in three years. The 3.72 rating fell short of the 2015 Final between Chicago and Tampa Bay. It was up 7 percent from last year’s Game 1 and 36 percent from 2016.
Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., weren’t the only cities interested in the compelling matchup, as 10 other markets had their highest TV ratings for a Game 1 in which their local team wasn’t playing — Buffalo, N.Y., Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Nashville, Tenn., Pittsburgh, Salt Lake, St. Louis and Tampa Bay, Fla.
The game was also the most streamed game in NHL history on 321,000 unique devices, up 67 percent from last year’s Game 1 between Pittsburgh and Nashville.
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