The puck drops on the NHL’s regular season today. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia kick off NBC’s hockey coverage at 3pm. (Chicago – LA will be available in some markets) Expect monster ratings in at least Pittsburgh today. Just look at all the puck-obsessed, hockey-starved people who tuned into a scrimmage this week. From the Tribune-Review:

The Penguins‘ Black & Gold scrimmage registered a 6.67 Nielsen rating for Root Sports Pittsburgh on Wednesday night. That bested all prime-time programming on any network or cable station. About 210,000 regional viewers watched the scrimmage, Nielsen reported.

Can you imagine the Ratings! headlines those numbers would garner if they were nationwide? Hockey is back! In Pittsburgh at least. Not so much other places.

Here for example. Sorry you didn’t get a huge blowout preview like last year. Is it alright if we give you the Bill Simmons excuse? Hockey is dead to us after the lockout! I mean, that’s how it is at ESPN and they have a much larger number of employees. On the first day of the NHL season,  you can’t even see who is playing at 10am. You can see that there are no soccer games or college basketball games featuring top 25 programs today.

As of 2:30, they have updated the site to show the NHL. Catch the fever!