TORONTO – The first-ever IIHF World Championship in Canada was a hit for TSN. 1.4 million viewers in the English-speaking part of Canada were watching the end of the final game, when Russia’s Ilya Kovalchuk scored the game-winning goal in overtime against the Canadians. The average during the game was 947,000, which was higher than those of the NHL conference final games on TSN and CBC.

For TSN, it was an increase of 39 percent compared to last year’s gold medal game, when Canada won the 2007 World Championship in Moscow. It's the second-highest rating for the World Championship after the 2005 Worlds, when the Czech-Canadian gold medal game in Vienna during the NHL lockout had an average of 1.35 million viewers.