TNT will cap off its second year as an NHL rightsholder soon by broadcasting the 2023 Stanley Cup Finals on the network. Inside the NBA analyst Charles Barkley is thrilled that the network is one of the TV homes to hockey in America.
The league and Warner Bros. Discovery, still Turner Sports at the time, combined with ESPN reached a deal on a seven-year rights contract in 2021. Barkley, in an interview on Barstool’s Spittin’ Chiclets, said if executives at the network had listened to him, they would’ve had NHL rights 10 years ago.
“Our boss was like, ‘Nobody’s watching hockey.’ I said ‘You don’t understand. They don’t watch hockey during the regular season, but they’ll watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs,'” Barkley told his boss. “And then they went to some shit network like the outdoor channel if I remember correctly.”
The NHL, when it returned after the 2004-05 lockout season, did air games in the United States on OLN, which rebranded from being known as the Outdoor Life Network. The network soon morphed into Versus, which then became NBCSN before NBCUniversal ended the network at the end of 2021.
As Barkley recalled, those were tough times as an American hockey fan. OLN didn’t appear on his cable lineup.
“I was like, ‘Hey man, I’m rich and got cable, and I can’t find OLN,'” Barkley joked. “Finally they got all these great televisions and you can f–king just push a button and say, ‘Hey, OLN.'”
Barkley said he became a hockey fan when he was drafted to the Philadelphia 76ers in 1984. He remembered following the Flyers and befriending several former players like Ron Hextall and Eric Lindros.
Charles at one point during TNT’s coverage of the NBA Playoffs, joked on the air that the basketball game they were watching was too boring, so he was paying more attention to the Stanley Cup Playoff games happening at the same time.
Barkley also said TNT leaders recruited him to talk legend Wayne Gretzky into becoming a studio analyst. After that conversation, Rick Tocchet reached out to Barkley to discuss how he too could get on TNT’s radar.
Charles was over the moon when it all worked out and TNT got NHL rights.
“I’m really excited that we got hockey, man,” he said. “It’s been awesome.”
The Stanley Cup Final will be on TNT again in 2025 and 2027. As part of the media rights deal, ABC will get Stanley Cup coverage in 2024, 2026 and 2028.
