Connor Bedard's NHL debut makes cool viewership history

It turns out that when a team has a generational talent, fans want to see him play on television.

According to Jon Lewis at Sports Media Watch, Tuesday night's season opener between the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins drew 1.43 million viewers on ESPN — making it the most watched non-Winter Classic regular-season game ever on cable. The game was the official debut of Connor Bedard, whom Chicago selected No. 1 overall in last spring's NHL Draft.

Bedard is also responsible for the most watched draft ever as Chicago fans likely tuned in to see their future star don the team's red sweater for the first time.

There's also something to be said for how ESPN promoted the start of the new season with greater effort compared to last year. Awful Announcing spotlighted all the moments where programming that normally gives little attention to the NHL was suddenly awash with interviews from star players and more advertisements. This revived effort coincides with an increase in advertising dollars that Disney raked in for the new season, as reported by MediaPost.

Lewis also noted that the Chicago/Pittsburgh game was the second contest of a tripleheader on ESPN:

"Blackhawks-Penguins was the middle game of a season-opening tripleheader on ESPN. The (Seattle) Kraken-(Vegas) Golden Knights nightcap drew 691,000, up 24% from Golden Knights-(Los Angeles) Kings a year ago. (Nashville) Predators-(Tampa Bay) Lightning opened the tripleheader with 598,000; there was no comparable window last year."

Having Bedard, who notched his first point on an assist to Ryan Donato's goal, in the prime-time hours proved that the game was a good lead-in to the Golden Knights' defense of the Stanley Cup as the champs raised their title banner.

Surely, Bedard-mania will bode well for ESPN once again on Oct. 24 when the network goes all-in on its "Frozen Frenzy," a night that will function like the NFL's RedZone for puck fans. Locally, the new era of 'Hawks hockey should be a major boost to NBC Sports Chicago, the regional channel that's been home to the team since 2004. 

As for the Penguins, the season is early enough where fans can hope that the NHL season goes a lot better than the NFL slate has been for the Steelers.