Stanley Cup win pulls decent crowds

The Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup last night with a 3-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers. They also gave a small but significant victory to NBC, closing out its first season as hockey’s home after last year’s lockout: an uptick in ratings.

Last night’s Game Seven averaged a 2.3 adults 18-49 overnight rating from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., according to Nielsen fast nationals. Those numbers measure only timeslot data, not program data, so the final number may jump when the bit airing after 11 p.m. is factored in to final ratings.

Regardless, this will be the highest-rated game of the series by far. It was up 92 percent over the 1.2 final average earned by Saturday’s Game Six. It also bettered Game Five’s 1.6 average and Game Four’s 1.3 average while becoming NBC’s first game to break 4 million total viewers.

In fact, it broke that barrier by a great deal, averaging 5.45 million total viewers.

Still, things must be put in perspective: Good for hockey doesn't mean much. NBC managed just a third place on the night among 18-49s, behind even a slate of reruns on CBS. And among total viewers, it was only 300,000 ahead of ABC, which was dragged down by another dismal showing by the new “How To Get the Guy.”

Meanwhile, Fox squeezed into No. 1 for the night with a 2.7 rating and 8 share among 18-49s, followed by CBS at 2.6/7, NBC at 2.3/7, ABC at 2.0/6, Univision at 1.6/3, UPN at 0.8/2 and WB at 0.7/2.

At 8 p.m., CBS was No. 1 with a 2.3 for repeats of "King of Queens" and "How I Met Your Mother," followed by ABC's "Wife Swap" rerun at 2.1 and Fox's "Hell's Kitchen" repeat at 2.0. Both NBC's Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals and Univision's "La Fea Mas Bella" averaged a 1.9, trailed by UPN's "One on One" and "All of Us" reruns at 0.8 and WB's "7th Heaven" repeat at 0.7.

It's draft time for Vancouver

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