CANADA — CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada will return this season through a partnership with the Professional Women’s Hockey League, giving the familiar television brand a different Saturday-night lineup.

A December 5 meeting between Montreal and Hamilton is scheduled to be the first women’s hockey game carried under the Hockey Night banner, The Canadian Press reports.

The change follows the end of the sublicensing arrangement that allowed CBC to show NHL games supplied by Rogers Communications. The companies did not extend that agreement for the coming season.

Hockey Night will be part of CBC Sports Primetime, a new weekly Saturday-night sports program launching this weekend.

For Hamilton viewers, the December matchup brings a local connection to a major change in Canadian sports television. It also gives women’s professional hockey a place within a broadcast tradition that began on CBC television in 1952.

Source: The Canadian Press, published by Barrie 360, September 28.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration, not a photograph of the reported event.