I’m sure all of you were mighty impressed with Paul’s posting earlier this morning that Versus drew a record 1.7 rating for Sunday night’s Pens-Flyers game, to the tune of 2.3 Million viewers.  I’d like to take you a little deeper with some of these numbers, to show you how impressive the NHL’s “drawing power” was on the network no one can seem to find on Sunday night.

-VERSUS was the #1 cable network among total viewers , Men 18-34, and Men 18-49 for it’s time period.
-The game drew a 9.4 in Philadelphia, and a whopping 22.3 in Pittsburgh, the largest in either market for any NHL game in those cities.  VERSUS was the #1 TV network in Pittsburgh Sunday night, counting both cable and broadcast.  The game was #2 in Philly among all networks.
-The telecast was the second highest-rated, and second most-watched telecast in VERSUS/OLN history.  Only Lance Armstrong’s 2005 Tour de France victory drew higher numbers.
-It was the most-watched hockey telecast in network history, beating out Game 4 of this year’s Rangers/Penguins series.
-It was the most-watched Conference Final in network history, beating out the 1.1 for Game 7 of the 2006 Buffalo/Carolina series.

For the Conference Finals so far (Through Game 2 of both series):

-VERSUS has averaged a 1.2 rating, up 50% from a 0.8 in 2007.
-VERSUS is up 50% in Half-hour viewer impressions, up 128% in Men 18-34, up 93% in Men 18-49, up 61% in Men 25-54 (all key NHL demographics that the network tailors their advertisements to).
-VERSUS is up 61% in total viewers.

Pretty impressive for a network only in 74 Million homes, eh?