Streaming Video on NHL.TV
NHL.TV's video offerings are pretty robust. Users get the option of streaming either the home or away broadcast for each game, of course, but they also get additional angles: the service also offers in-goal cameras, which is a cool feature that sets it apart from some other sports streaming services. Audio-only feeds are usually (though not always) also available. One note: NHL.TV won't let you pair the TV video with the radio audio, which is a shame.
As with other streaming services, you'll be able to re-play games from earlier in the season. You can also re-play games from past seasons, though that feature isn't available on mobile devices (more on that in a moment). On replays, you get convenient little markers on the progress bar. Those indicate highlights that you may want to skip to (see screenshot above). It's a nice touch.
Of course, NHL.TV shares the common issue of pretty much all streaming services: blackouts. You'll be blacked out if the game is televised in your local market (the NHL does, at least, have a useful online tool to help you figure out which teams' games won't be available to you). You'll also find games blacked out if they're nationally televised on any network. That's annoying enough when it's NBC Sports, but it's particularly galling that the NHL blacks out the games that they broadcast on NHL Network. TV deals are a great revenue source for the NHL's teams, so a blackout of local games to benefit local cable channels at least makes logical sense, but why should the NHL's streaming service black out games that air on the NHL's own channel?
Perks
We already mentioned the inclusion of goalie cams and the lack of radio broadcast overlay, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention one really cool feature of NHL.TV: NHL Vault. As the name suggests, this is a collection of classic NHL games that you can stream on-demand as a part of your NHL.TV subscription. You can also get NHL Vault through a separate subscription without buying NHL.TV.
The selection isn't mind-blowing, and there are a few games excluded that will have fans scratching their heads (for instance, Penguins fans will find several games from the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals, but not the decisive Game 7). Quality on these games is also a little questionable, but that's understandable – they're old games, after all. The commercials and stoppages are cut out, so the games flow quickly. It's not by any means a perfect classics collection, but it's a cool perk that some other league packages don't offer.
NHL Vault's dedicated site also includes every regular-season game from recent past seasons. That collection goes back to the 2009-10 season, and it's pretty cool.
The downside to these NHL Vault features is that they're not available on mobile devices. You can only watch NHL Vault on your computer or through non-mobile apps (like the one for Xbox).
Devices
NHL.TV works on a fairly robust selection of devices. It's pretty effective and easy to use on all of them. There are a few more quirks than with MLB.tv, which remains the best of the sports streaming services, but none of NHL.TV's quirks will ruin your experience.
The NHL's mobile app supports Chromecast, which is nice, though it's not done quite so crisply as one might hope. Casting a game to your television takes a series of taps. Apparently NHL.TV really wants to make super-duper sure that you really want to cast their content:
The most obnoxious thing we found when using Chromecast to view NHL.TV was that when we changed the feed (that is, to a different broadcast or camera angle), nothing happened on our TV – it just kept playing the original one. We had to disconnect from the Chromecast (at which point the proper feed started on our tablet) and then reconnect with it in order to make the change. It's not the end of the world, but it's pretty shoddy programing for an expensive service. This problem was observed when we were using an Android tablet.
We didn't have serious trouble with any of the NHL.TV apps we tried, which included the Xbox, Android, iOS, and in-browser versions. They're all pretty simple and user-friendly, and they'll let you do the things you'd expect: choose between audio and video feeds, check scores, follow a favorite team, and so on.
Price
At $131.49 or $24.99/month, the NHL's streaming service is significantly cheaper than the NBA's or the NFL's, but still quite a bit more than the MLB's. Whether this is too much money to spend depends on how much you love your hockey, but there's no question that you'll be paying more for fewer games than fans of baseball are – even though baseball is the more popular sport of the two.
Verdict
Is NHL.TV worth $131.49? Well, it depends on how much you love hockey. But what we can tell you is that you can safely make your decision entirely about hockey: product quality isn't a concern, because NHL.TV delivers everything it says it will. It offers pretty reliable streaming across multiple platforms, a cool back-catalog of old games, and a pretty wide selection of match-ups (missing only, of course, games covered by your local and national broadcasts). Sure, we wish it was cheaper and as good as the near-flawless MLB.tv, but it's still a no-brainer for die-hards. If you're a big fan of hockey living outside your team's local market (or willing to use a VPN to illegally pretend you live elsewhere), we absolutely recommend it.
You should probably mention that NHL is switching platforms in January to the MLB platform. See http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=776247
Thanks for the link!
The new format stinks! No more Game Highlight show, not you have to pick one at a time in small segments. No more Condensed Game… Booooo NHL GameCenter, I want half my money back!
I hate NHL Gamecenter Live. They block out local games based on IP address, which can be blocked out with VPN. The thing that upsets me is that NBCSN shows games that I can’t gain access to. Currently the Coors Stadium game is playing and I have no way to access, unless I purchased NBCSN for like 5-6 games. So stupid. Plus, no playoff games? Not worth my money if they’re going to find a way to make me pay every penny out of my pocket for hockey.
If you think you’re going to see the playoffs, avoid. Every single playoff game is blocked out. Furiously disappointed.
EARLY BIRD PASS $179.99
Save $20 by signing up for a 2016-17 Early Bird Pass by October 11th, 2016. PLUS, get access in September to watch the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. Includes full access to national & out-of-market games through the 2016-17 NHL Season and all games of the Stanley Cup® Playoffs. Access lasts until August 31, 2017.Includes both English & French broadcasts, as available.
This is from the Rogers website in Canada. Not sure if the same package is available in the US. But this includes all playoff games plus the World Cup of Hockey. I also confirmed today with a customer service rep that its possible to share your login credentials with at least 3 people who can all be logged in at the same time. Pretty reasonably priced if you’re sharing with a few friends.
Also, for any Canucks fans at least, there’s no blackouts. Again confirmed with the Rogers CSR. All 82 games available on GameCenter Live. I believe its because Rogers has rights to all the games. Works for me.
Terrible service. 0/10 stars. Streaming quality is very poor, unless you like the stream rolling back 30 seconds every minute or two. I paid for a full year up front, thinking they had released a finished product. After two weeks, my only positive impression comes from the possibility the NHL is in need of good software developers. Since I am a software developer, maybe I can apply and get my money back that way. If nothing else, at least the app won’t suck after I am done with it.
Subscribed to Rogers NHL in hopes of canceling cable only to find out most of the local games are blacked out. Extremely disappointed and now out over $200.
Read the fine print!!! I paid upfront for the year for the $115.99 package, that “allows” me to watch my team’s (sharks) games, only to find out that all my local games are blacked out. $116, and I haven’t seen a game this preseason or season.
Come playoff time, I guess I won’t be watching them either.
I am Canadian was charged for a full year not realizing cant get the games up here.I called for reimbursement as I was automatically charged for a full year.Got a whopping 20% credit.What a ripoff this is never again!!!
I am an experienced streamer including of live TV. This streaming service was by far the poorest quality service I have ever experienced. They do not appear to be ready for prime time. I paid $99 for the service (while noting that the cancellation policy allowed for a full refund if canceled within 5 days).
My short experience with the service was that it was littered with intermittent bugs: failure to keep me logged in, failure to keep my hide-score preferences, …and ultimately failure to stream games and failure to log me in at all.
Unfortunately, I did not experience all of these problems until *shortly* after the 5 days. To my astonishment, at that point, NHL tv refused to give me even a prorated refund ( I thought I deserved a full refund).
So, I essentially paid $99 for nothing but frustration.
I had a similar problem. The quality of the service only continued to get worse with time. If the game was on tv, I would always choose the tv version because I was the poor quality of the service. From to sound to no picture to having to reboot, I would estimate 90 % of the games had some problems. Rogers blames Telus, Telus blames Apple and Rogers, and I am stuck with an over priced poor quality NHL service from Rogers.
not very helpful that i can’t watch my local team due to blackout restrictions. at least i only paid $3.99. i can get over that. bummed.
NHL.live is a complete scam if you live in the US. Every single game will be blacked out and when you ask them for a refund, they will tell you are one day outside of your “remorse” period. $86.24 down the drain. DO NOT BUY THIS SERVICE. The tool they give you to check blackout games only includes Canada. US based customers S.O.L.
Terrible production. Too many ads,too long between periods,with boring interminable analysts,and jerky production. The announcers consider themselves the stars.Are they using a long view lens? Hard to see.Give it zero!
AVOID NHL.TV!! Its a scam. After I purchased a $9.99 subscription, I found out that my subscription was expiring in 6 days (yes, not in a month). They had never responded on my email. The live chat option did not work either because the agents were never available.
On the top of this, I could not watch live a lot of games because of blackouts. Their description about blackouts is wrong – according to my zip code, only two teams should be unavailable. But, in reality almost every game I wanted to watch live was locked.
I tried out nhl.tv to try and watch the 2020 playoffs. Currently if you have a subscription and live within the “national broadcast area” you will only get to watch 4 of the playoff games live. All the other games, you will need to watch as a replay because they will be blacked out. Personally, I don’t believe they make this clear when signing up. You have to go to nhl.com to look up the playoff schedule to see which are nationally broadcast. On top of that, they don’t have the finals schedule up, so you can’t even see which games are going to be nationally televised, I guess you just have to hope that you’ll get to watch, or just plan on watching it later and not live.
unfortunately if you can’t watch a game live NHL.TV game archives are not available for 48 hours which is ridiculous…MLB.TV archived games are available 90 minutes after the game..
Don’t do it. NHL.Tv is a nightmare. Can’t watch most of the games, customer service is abhorent! They take your money and you can only watch, maybe 1/3 of the season.
Thankfully we didn’t pay for this
We won the 2020 2021 subscription through Tim Hortons
If I would have dropped the $200 they want for it I would have freaked
We were so excited we had it on it said the game started at 7 at 6:59 we clicked on it and read this is blacked out in your area
We were using live Net TV to watch it free via SLI and considering purchasing an NHL subscription because of how choppy can get it sometimes
So we’ll continue to watch the game on the live Net TV app
It’s a shame when you think of doing things the legal way you just get screwed
It says it’s available 24 hours after the game who wants to watch a game 24 hours after was played after you know the score the highlights just ridiculous
We didn’t have any issues until this year. We have the app on our Roku smart tv an get a “no live feed available” message to ach time you come me back to the app from anything else like Netflix, Amazon Prime or cable. We are still signed in but the last boy way to get it to work is to log out and sign back in. Not a significant problem but still a pain. Anyone law have this issue? Any suggestions?
Same problem here, couldn’t figure out how to avoid it.
We didn’t have any issues until this year. We have the app on our Roku smart tv and get a “no live feed available” message each time you come me back to the app from anything else like Netflix, Amazon Prime or cable. We are still signed in but the only way to get it to work is to log out and sign back in. Not a significant problem but still a pain. Anyone else have this issue? Any suggestions?
Requested refund on 1/20/2021 (waited 30mins on phone). “We’ll have to escalate your request, as you are beyond 5 days from the charge. You’ll get an email in 24-48hrs.” Nothing. Called back today. “I see the request was escalated but can’t tell you when or if you’ll get a refund”. TOTAL INCOMPETENCE and LACK OF BASIC CUSTOMER SERVICE. They have visibility to my account usage and should empower their employees to process these simple requests then and there; it’s not worth THEIR time to dick around with this, much less mine! They have poked the bear, and I won’t stop until everyone knows how bad their service truly is.
NHL.tv is indeed a RIP-OFF (for all the reasons stated above, and more!),
UNLESS…
…you set it up through a VPN (not trivial, granted, but not too hard either for most folks).
AND THEN,
WHOOHOO, nhl.tv is really worthwhile! WOW!
HD streams (of pretty good quality, not 4k sadly).
And I’ve been able to watch my Rangers lose every one of their games! WhooHoo!
This is how stupid they are. They have a reasonably decent product but they make it SO HARD to actually use it.
Nobody ever accused hockey folks of being too bright!
🙂
Can’t watch Toronto game but I paid over 200? I can only view the game 48 hours after …how is that “live”. I feel completely ripped off.
Please the app is showing the same 3 commercials for weeks on end. Why can’t you do like NHL Center Ice and show the advertising from other feeds.
Beware of this service. Selecting the single team option, you may be subjected with having every single game blacked out — happened to me. Repeated attempts to get my money back went unanswered. The customer service is abysmal. Total rip-off.
Horrible customer service. Called to find out where my refund is since it’s been a month since they authorized it. Got told is still pending. They also owe anyone who had the NHL tv last year a partial refund only, they won’t tell you about it and you have to individually request it. Very shady business practice. Every game blacked out is a pathetic way to run a company. Then I asked to speak to the manager about my refund and the lunatic on the other end said my refund will get back to me before they can. I asked him so longer than a couple weeks and he said yes. Pathetic excuse for a company and their customer service is anti customer.
Sorry but with more people getting rid of cable, there should be no blackouts in nhl. This is so irritating. Also, the silent breaks are annoying. With all the $ this network makes, give us viewers something worthwhile to watch and nit the same reruns break after break! Tonite while watching the Leafs/Habs game, it broke to commercial during the game!! WTH!!!
For the second time in three years, I have self-learned that my NHL.TV account has been compromised by international password hacking. When I called customer service, they told me it was pretty obvious as there was a moment when over 2,000 people were logged into my account at one time.
That said, in the 2021 version of this story, it’s taken two weeks for this issue to be reviewed and while both calls to Customer Service have told me that a “password reset” email is coming my way, the guy on the phone couldn’t tell me for certain if he actually worked for NHL.TV. I only asked him this because common sense would say that if they were going to turn off my account due to compromise, they could send me an email to address the issue just as easily as they can to reset the password after I self-identified the issue. The Customer Service person agreed with me and said there was no way that he knew of to escalate the concern.
That said, two points for NHL.TV hiring people of North American descent to answer their phones rather than shipping the calls to India. But, otherwise, unless things are working at 100% from point of purchase, just view NHL.TV as an organaization with a cash-grab mentality.
Major Ripoff. I live out west however every game I have tried to watch is blacked out. That about 15 games. They don’t give you your money back. The agrees it’s a problem but he has no control. These people should be investigated for fraud. Don’t sign up.
I signed up for nhl package and soon realized I cannot watch any AB games. Assuming blackouts would only affect the city I live in. I’m currently in Toronto trying to watch a mon/van game and I’m blacked out from vewing. Rogers and the NHL make it difficult to appreciate this service. I will never use this service or Rogers again. I feel like an idiot I assumed they were a well recognized product but when I tried to cancel after 6 days of service they refused. I thought I was dealing with professionals but turns out Rogers and NHL is just a two bit bucket shop. I will ensure they never get another $ of my money every again. Fool me once… Shane on you.
Absolutely horrible, every game is blacked out and when I’ve reached out ive gotten zero response. I wanted my money back and no one has gotten back to me after emailing several times to get the problem resolved. I would never recommend this to anybody. This service is fraudulent, talk about straight thievery. 100 dollars down the drain. Don’t waste your time or money.
This service is absolutely terrible. I haven’t been able to watch a game all season.
I’ve tried with this for years now, but the blackouts just make this so unusable. And now, my PlayStation app has been “temporarily unavailable” for literally months. It’s a borderline fraudulent business practice given the high cost.
This has the potential to be such a great product, but whoever manages this mess needs to figure out the digital product and make all games watchable. It’s 2021 FFS.
Service is terrible, way too many blackouts to call themselves NHL Tv. Too many network issues with small amount of extra coverage. GO with SOMEONE else, just awful
Even in a market with no team we still have 25% blackouts. They have a blackout finder tool in the sign up flow, but it doesn’t show anything beyond the local team blackouts. The guy in customer service must be pretty practiced on this one as he had his script down. Yes, we don’t tell you about the blackouts with our black out tool, but we do mention there could be blackouts in the fine print. Total garbage product – if you sell all your video rights, don’t try to package up the leftovers and make a sub-par product. Pretty low standards from the PM and customer care team here across the board.
Criminal steal of your money: you are out of “market” area. Watch all season get excited about play-offs but huh you cannot watch anymore.
Im a Leafs fan ( I know) watching NHL TV. in Chicago area. First play off game against Montreal (whattayamean exciting?): nothing showing. Apparently some channel pays and decides not to show whole game and fans are screwed.
Disgusting
Don’t pay for this total rip off
So, in January I paid $99.99 US for the “all access pass” – except I’ve had zero access to my local teams (Kings, Ducks) in real time. 48 hours later those games are available. But I knew that going in. And I like to watch games around the league anyway. But then there’s this other egregious gap in NHL.tv service: Tonight, right smack in the middle of round 1 of the playoffs, I suddenly have no access to Game 6 of Penguins/Islanders, Vegas/Minnesota and Florida/Tampa Bay. The stakes are high – potential elimination games. And now is when NHL.tv cuts me off! And I can’t stream them on CNBC or NBCSN unless I have a cable log in – i.e. unless I pay a huge amount more than what I already paid to NHL.tv for “all access” LOL
Buyer beware!
NHL Live doesn’t work with some smart TVs including Samsung. I found this out the hard (and expensive) way. There’s nothing on their site about this but when I subscribed in February 2021 I found out quickly and contactedthem immediately through their live Chat line. ‘We’re sorry, no problem, we’ll cancel your account immediately and refund the payment…..’ Unfortunately this did NOT happen nor did it happen after a number of subsequent ‘Live Chats’. I was still being charged monthly. I was finally able to reach someone by telephone at the end of June only to be told they would ‘cancel my subscription immediately’ but could do nothing about past charges, nor do they have access to a record of their own Live Chats. Not happy!! I will never subscribe to one of their services again.
NHL Live is the biggest waste of money ever. It is a complete scam. I thought I was purchasing a year subscription to NHL Live last February when I was charged full price for a season but turns out I only purchased the remainder of the season. When trying to contact NHL Live for the clarity on this I dealt with road block after road block. Save your money and find a different way to watch hockey. So disappointed that the best way to watch hockey isn’t through the NHL it’ self.
I agree Mark. Dealing with these people is extremely difficult. It’s Rogers.
Do not go anywhere near these guys. They are collapsing. Service has fallen off a cliff. and It seemed to work most of the time last year. 30 bucks a month and you can’t watch anything or get any help. Rogers must be involved somehow.
After reading these comments, I can’t imagine where that 8 out of ten stars rating came from. I don’t even see a place to post a rating. Let me just say that based on my personal experience, I give them a 1. That’s how many games I’ve been able to watch this season.
Buyer Beware! Pre purchased the 2021-2022 season back in September 2021. 40-50% of my teams games were blacked out. NHL live also boasted about subscribers getting “all playoff games” – do not believe them, as I have not been able to watch any game of the semi finals that are currently on. There is no Google review area, most likely an intentional move, as there are a lot of unhappy subscribers, such as myself. There is no way to contact them as well – also likely intentional. I will do my very best to warn future potential subscribers on forums such as this. I most definitely will not be returning as a subscriber to NHL Live.