USA-Canada Olympic Men's Hockey Semifinal is Highest Rated Hockey Game Ever on NBCSN

Canada's 1-0 victory over Team USA in Friday's Olympic men's hockey semifinal (Noon-2:30 p.m. ET/9 a.m-11:30 a.m. PT) posted a 2.7 household rating/8 share to rank as the highest-rated hockey game in NBCSN history, according to live plus same day fast national data released today by The Nielsen Company. Team USA-Canada topped the previous best NBCSN hockey rating - 2.6 for last Saturday's thrilling Team USA victory over Russia in an eight-round shootout -- and also exceeds the rating for any Stanley Cup Playoffs and Stanley Cup Finals games in the network's history.

U.S.-Canada averaged 3.9 million viewers (slightly below the 4.1 million for U.S.-Russia, which benefited from more group viewing on the weekend) leading NBCSN to its best-ever weekday daytime viewership (1.7 million viewers from 6 a.m.-3 p.m. ET). Viewership for the game peaked at 4.6 million from 1:30-2 p.m. ET.

Adding to the consumption of the Team USA-Canada semifinal, the "TV Everywhere" authenticated live stream of the game generated more than 2.1 million unique users (2,122,447) - the most unique users ever for any NBC Sports Digital stream, topping NBC's non-authenticated Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012 (2.105 million uniques). The 2.122 million unique users is believed to be the largest "TV Everywhere" authenticated streaming audience in U.S. history.

· NBCSN concludes its weekday daytime Sochi Olympic coverage with its 10 live telecasts ranking as the 10-most watched weekday daytimes in the network's history (6 a.m.-3 p.m. ET).

· Last night's Primetime Olympics on NBC (8:30-11 p.m. ET) averaged 14.9 million viewers and an 8.8 household rating/15 share. The comparable Friday night for the 2006 Torino Games - which featured the Figure Skating Gala (tonight on NBC at 8/7c hosted by Johnny Weir, Tara Lipinski and Terry Gannon) - averaged 15.9 million viewers and a 9.7 rating/17 share. The comparable Friday for the live 2010 Vancouver Games, highlighted by the final race for Lindsey Vonn and Apolo Ohno's eighth and final career Olympic medal-winning performance, averaged 24.5 million viewers and a 13.9 rating/24 share.

· NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports Live Extra app will live stream via "TV Everywhere" the Winter Games Closing Ceremony at 11 a.m. ET on Sunday.

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