Could there be a better example of hockey's irrelevance to General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) than what happened last Saturday afternoon when the network quit showing Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres just as it headed into overtime?

Faced with the dilemma of covering a game which could theoretically go last hours more, NBC went to the Preakness Stakes 20 minutes early (at 4:40 pm) while hockey was switched to Versus, the league's cable outlet which is a available in about half as many homes as NBC.

And Versus had trouble with the transfer, so viewers had no idea what was up until the game finally reappeared. NBC would have better served running recaps of the dreadful 2006 Winter Olympics from Turin, Italy (the lowest rated in Winter Olympics history) or maybe infomericals for the 2008 Summer Olympics leading up the Preakness. At least those could have perfect time constraints so as not to affect coverage of the horse race.

Hockey fans got screwed because NBC focused on the Preakness, which for sure makes it more money and gets better ratings. The network's deal with the NHL is a revenue-sharing arrangement for which NBC gets zero dollars from the league is why.

But why inflict that arrogance, which begins and ends with NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, on the handful of hockey viewers who bothered to watch?

By the way, the game ended midway through the first overtime with Ottawa winning to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Ever wonder why NBC broadcasts hockey?

Like arena football, the NHL is a time filler. It costs the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) network next to nothing to produce so any ratings benefits it gets are gravy, That's why NBC has to be happy the New York Rangers squared their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series against Buffalo on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. That guarantees a Game Six back in New York on Sunday afternoon following Friday night's fifth game in Buffalo.

And since one team will have a chance to clinch and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals against the New Jersey Devils or Ottawa Senators, ratings presumably will rise. The network can hope the game does better than Game Three, which drew a 1.8 Nielsen rating in New York, compared with a 2.1 for Fox's coverage of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Aaron's 499 and a 1.9 on CBS for its broadcast of the PGA Tour Byron Nelson Classic.

Those ratings are decidedly better than comparable NHL playoff games a year ago, but the fact that hockey trails every other major sport is worrisome.

The game does very well in regional markets such as Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis/St. Paul, but the days of drawing ratings comparable to baseball, basketfall and football are in the distant past. It hasn't helped that the NHL had a falling out with Walt Disney Co.'s (NYSE: DIS) ESPN following the lockout-lost 2004-05 season and chose Comcast Corp's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) VS network (formerly the Outdoor Life Network) as its cable home. The price tag: $67.5 million per year for two years versus $120 million per year for the previous five seasons on ESPN. Last year's average playoff rating on VS: a paltry 0.3%.

What can the NHL hope for June 2007? That the top U.S. media market has a team in the Finals for the first time since 1994.

General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC is thanking its lucky stars that the New York Rangers are in the National Hockey League playoffs as the month of May dawns. Otherwise, its ratings would probably be as pathetic as national numbers usually garnered by rodeo, lacrosse or the network's Thanksgiving Day tape dog show.

NBC yesterday saw a 44 percent surge in large-market Nielsen ratings for the double-overtime New York Rangers-Buffalo Sabres playoff game, won by the Rangers 2-1. NBC drew viewers in 1.3 percent of homes in the 56 largest U.S. media markets, which encompasses about two-thirds of the 111.4 million U.S. households with televisions. The game lasted more than four hours, ending at 6:15 pm Eastern Time, thus entering near-prime hours in the East.

Last year's comparable telecast on NBC, a contest between Anaheim and Colorado drew 0.9 percent of the same potential audience. Just to show how critical the New York market is, NBC's national coverage of the San Jose-Detroit game on Saturday had a 1.0 large-market rating, down 9.1 percent from coverage of a New Jersey-Carolina game a year ago.

Clearly, it's a case of as far as the Rangers go in these Stanley Cup playoffs, so goes the NHL's national television ratings on NBC, which has a revenue-sharing agreement with the league. Unlike other sports, the network pays the league zero dollars for rights to broadcast its games. Nonetheless, it's amazing that the sport is broadcast on network television at all.

Unfortunately for NBC, the ratings bump may not last.

The Rangers trail Buffalo two games to one and face an uphill battle to make it to the finals. Another big market team, the Detroit Red Wings, is in the playoffs as well, but chances are remote that they will wind up facing one another.