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| - On the heels of its surprise acquisition of the television rights to the National Football League in December 1993, Fox sought deals with other major sports leagues to expand its newly created sports division, opting to go after the rights to broadcast NHL games. CBS, which had just lost its NFL package (which primarily included the rights to regular season and playoff games from NFC) to Fox, was the network's primary competitor for the NHL package, hoping to replace some of the sports programming it had lost to the upstart network. Nevertheless, in a serious blow to the elder network, Fox outbid CBS for the NHL package as well. On September 9, 1994, NHL reached a 5 year contract with Fox for the broadcast television rights to the league's games, beginning with the 1994–95 season. The network paid $155 million ($31 million annually) to televise NHL regular season and postseason games, considerably less than the $1.58 billion it paid for NFL television rights. NHL's initial deal with Fox was significant, as a network television contract in the United States was long thought unattainable during the presidency of John Ziegler. For 17 years after 1975 Finals was broadcast on NBC, there would be no national over-the-air network coverage of NHL in United States (with the exception of CBS' coverage of Game 2 of 1979 Challenge Cup and Game 6 of 1980 Stanley Cup Finals, and NBC's coverage of NHL All-Star Game from 1990 to 1994) and only spotty coverage on regional networks. This was due to the fact that no network was willing to commit to carrying a large number of games, in turn, providing low ratings for NHL telecasts. ABC would eventually resume broadcasting regular NHL games (on a time buy basis through ESPN) for the 1992–93 season (and continuing through the 1993–94 season, before Fox took over for the next 5 seasons). Fox inaugurated its NHL coverage on April 2, 1995, towards the end of the 1994–95 regular season, with 6 games (between New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers; St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings; Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals; Chicago Blackhawks and Dallas Stars; Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning; and San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks). Mike Emrick and John Davidson served as the main broadcast team for the network's national game broadcasts, while regionally distributed games were handled by a variety of announcers For the first 4 years of the deal, James Brown and Dave Maloney hosted the show from the Fox studio in Los Angeles. For the 5th final season, it was Suzy Kolber and Terry Crisp. Occasionally, active NHL players such as Mike Modano would serve as guest analysts.
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