You'll likely see lower ratings in southern Ontario, especially if a Leafs game is on a regional broadcast at the same time. In the West and East the ratings might actually improve for a Saturday Habs game. The Habs, like the Leafs, have a national following that is starved for some English language programing...
As HNIC will have exclusive rights to national telecasts of NHL games on Saturday nights, my guess is you'll still see over 1 million viewers for the ET slot game regardless of the teams playing. That might be down from 1.3 million average for the Leafs, but still very respectable.
Ah, so there will be no national broadcasts to compete with it. It would have been interesting to see how a Leaf/X Ottawa/Montreal national broadcast fared.
Will be interesting to see if your estimate of a million is correct too. I'm not too informed about the specifics, but don't Montreal fans watch RDS, at least in Quebec? Do those numbers get rolled into CBC ratings?
If not, would it not be an issue in that much of the two largest provinces in Canada may not be tuning into CBC? Of course, Ottawa is in Canada too but I still presume their fan base is quite small when compared to the Habs/Leafs.
. However, for a national broadcaster to limit itself to one region, and one region only for three hours every week at the expense of two others is quite frustrating for people that like to see other teams as well. Doubly so since 7-10ET on Saturday nights in winter is pretty much the only time slot where CBC cares about ratings.
No doubt, nor do I wish to turn this into an argument for which is better than the other. Am just interested in seeing what kind of drop, if any, we will see.