Buffalo top market as Team USA-Canada Olympic men's hockey semifinal highest-rated ever on NBCSN

Leads network to record weekday daytime viewership

Buffalo, Minneapolis, Boston, Pittsburgh and Providence top local market ratings for Team USA-Canada semifinal

Canada's 1-0 victory over Team USA in Friday's Olympic men's hockey semifinal (noon-2:30 p.m. ET) posted a 2.7 household rating/8 share to rank as the highest-rated hockey game in NBCSN history, according to live plus same day fast national data released today by The Nielsen Company. Team USA-Canada topped the previous best NBCSN hockey rating - 2.6 for last Saturday's Team USA victory over Russia in an eight-round shootout - and also exceeds the rating for any Stanley Cup Playoffs and Stanley Cup Finals games in the network's history.

U.S.-Canada averaged 3.9 million viewers (slightly below the 4.1 million for U.S.-Russia, which benefited from more group viewing on the weekend), leading NBCSN to its best-ever weekday daytime viewership (1.7 million viewers from 6 a.m.-3 p.m.). Viewership for the game peaked at 4.6 million from 1:30-2 p.m.

Adding to the consumption of the Team USA-Canada semifinal, the "TV Everywhere" authenticated live stream of the game generated more than 2.1 million unique users (2,122,447) - the most unique users ever for any NBC Sports Digital stream, topping NBC's non-authenticated Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012 (2.105 million uniques). The 2.122 million unique users is believed to be the largest "TV Everywhere" authenticated streaming audience in U.S. history.

•NBCSN concludes its weekday daytime Sochi Olympic coverage with its 10 live telecasts ranking as the 10-most watched weekday daytimes in the network's history (6 a.m.-3 p.m.).

•Last night's primetime Olympics on NBC (8:30-11 p.m.) averaged 14.9 million viewers and an 8.8 household rating/15 share. The comparable Friday night for the 2006 Torino Games - which featured the figure skating gala - averaged 15.9 million viewers and a 9.7 rating/17 share. The comparable Friday for the live 2010 Vancouver Games, highlighted by the final race for Lindsey Vonn and Apolo Ohno's eighth and final career Olympic medal-winning performance, averaged 24.5 million viewers and a 13.9 rating/24 share.

•NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports Live Extra app will live stream via "TV Everywhere" the Winter Games closing ceremony at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

Top 10 metered markets for Friday's Team USA-Canada hockey semifinal on NBCSN