The NHL on NBC is an American presentation of National Hockey League (NHL) games produced by NBC Sports, and televised on NBC properties, including MSNBC, CNBC, Golf Channel, USA Network and NBCSN in the United States. While NBC covered the league at various points in its history, the network's last relationship with the NHL is the result of NBC Sports acquiring the league's broadcast television rights from ABC in 2005. Its most recent contract with the league ran until the end of the 2020–21 NHL season; NHL broadcasting rights onward have been acquired by ABC/ESPN and Turner Sports (now known as Warner Bros. Discovery Sports). Though the main NBC network no longer airs NHL games, NBC Sports Regional Networks currently airs some games in the form of game telecasts that air on a regional basis, featuring local NHL franchises that each of the regional networks have respective broadcast rights to air in their designated market. From 2008 until the end of the NHL on NBC in 2021, NBC's regular season coverage included the annual NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor game usually played on New Year's Day; one national weekly regular season game each Sunday afternoon after New Year's Day; one week of nationally televised contests in February for Hockey Day in America; and one nationally televised game one day after Thanksgiving. NBCSN's coverage included 90 regular season games that were mostly aired on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, and later in the season on Sunday nights. Coverage of the Stanley Cup Playoffs was split between NBC and NBCSN, with CNBC and the USA Network (beginning in 2015) airing selected playoff games during the first two rounds. History February 25, 1940 and 1966 As part of a series of experimental broadcasts that W2XBS (now NBC's flagship station, WNBC) produced between 1939 and 1940, the station broadcast a game between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens from Madison Square Garden on February 25, 1940. Bill Allen provided the commentary. About 300 people in the New York City area saw the Rangers win, 6–2. Over the next few years, W2XBS (later WNBT) carried some New York Rangers home games on a local basis. A few New York Americans and Rangers games were on experimental TV stations in 1940-41 and 1941-42; then TV closed down until 1945-46. Regularly scheduled American network broadcasts of NHL games would not begin until the late 1950s, when