I am taking it for granted that people who watch hockey on streams are hockey fanatics like you and I. USA-Russia was re-broadcast during prime time by the regular NBC network, which has a much larger viewer audience than MSNBC and NBCSN, which are niche cable networks that attract much smaller viewing audiences, especially at 6 a.m. Also, I am sure USA-Canada attracted a large viewing audience, but I am equally sure that the USA-Slovenia audience was limited to hockey freaks, who are a very small minority in the US. I saw a report on Dallasnews.com, the online version of the Dallas Morning News, whose thesis was that the NHL wanted to avoid Sochi for the very reasons that they are citing now - being relegated to much smaller cable networks, and broadcasting games at the crack of dawn.
Beyond that, it talked about the fact that it is much harder to get back to the regular NHL schedule after almost 3 weeks 10 time zones to the East. Then there are the injuries (Zetterberg, Tavares). All in all, the point made was that NHL executives are saying privately that they are not even considering Korea. I can't imagine that they would consider it. The collapse of Team USA will only tend to damage the brand in NA. Dallasnews said that the NHL is already decided on not going to Korea, and I believe it.
P.S. Congratulations to Team Finland for one of the most brilliant and ballsy Olympic performances of all time. The Finns were amazing. I have to wonder if Rask had been available yesterday, whether the Finns would be wearing Gold around their necks instead of Bronze by tomorrow night.