The NHL Game of the Week is a weekly presentation of National Hockey League games that air on NBC. The NHL began airing on NBC in the 2005-06 NHL season and typically produces one game per weekend, typically on Sunday afternoons, beginning the weekend of the NFL Conference Championship games.
During the 2016–17 NHL season, NBC Sports began to promote both the Game of the Week and Sunday Night Hockey broadcasts under the Star Sunday brand, focusing primarily on the NHL's star players. Star Sunday features extensive pre-game, in-game and post-game coverage of each featured player. The first game under the new package featured the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings on January 22, 2017, with Ryan McDonagh and Dylan Larkin the featured players of their respective teams.[1]
During the season, NBC's Star Sunday concept was added to the Game of the Week package.[5] The first game under the new brand took place on January 22, 2017 in a game between the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings.[1]
[6] NBC initially announced that no NHL games would be aired on the network during the 2018 Winter Olympics, however they changed course and added three Sunday afternoon games in February as a lead-in to the Winter Olympics, allowing Mike Emrick and Eddie Olczyk to stay home and call 3 NHL games.[7] NBC switched the final minutes of the 2018 NHL Stadium Series to its sister network NBCSN (except for viewers in the Washington DC market) at 11:00 p.m. eastern time due to the power outage delay. [8]Star Sunday returned on March 11, 2018, both as part of the Game of the Week and Sunday Night Hockey package.
[9] For the first time, NBC selected two regional games which to aired it in primetime on February 2, 2019. Star Sunday returned on February 3, 2019, both as part of the Game of the Week and Sunday Night Hockey package. This will mark the first season of Star Sunday to have its presenting sponsor; AT&T was the first presenting sponsor and they branded themselves as Star Sunday presented by AT&T.