Huge change set to affect how fans in Canada watch NHL playoff hockey and it's upsetting many
Photo credit: IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Rogers Communications and Prime Video announced a 12-year sublicensing agreement Tuesday covering Wednesday night national games in English and French.
Starting with the 2026-27 season, Prime Video will carry National Hockey League games in French for the first time, and that detail matters more than the night change.
The package includes at least 26 regular-season games, opening Wednesday, September 30, plus two first-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series and one second-round series every year.
Amazon held Monday nights for the past two seasons under a short-term arrangement. Sportsnet has taken that window back and keeps more than 500 national games, including Saturdays.
Why the language line matters
Quebecor chief executive Pierre Karl Péladeau spent a year warning publicly that TVA Sports could not afford what the NHL was asking for national French-language rights.
TVA Sports is back in that national role, but La Presse reported last week that roughly seven Montreal Canadiens games still had no French-language home for 2026-27.
A bilingual Wednesday package closes that gap. Rogers did not simply sell a night, it outsourced a problem its French-language partners could no longer carry alone.
Thirty-six series over twelve years
Three playoff series per season across 12 years is 36 Stanley Cup Playoffs series that will live only on Prime Video in Canada.
That is not a Montreal or Toronto issue. Any of the seven Canadian clubs could have a first or second-round run land entirely behind a subscription their fans do not already hold.
Rogers is promising fewer blackouts under the $11 billion agreement running through 2037-38.
Access and availability are not the same thing, and this deal quietly separates them for more than a decade.
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