Sportscasters are patting themselves on the back for their online coverage of the NHL’s trade deadline day last month, which set records for online traffic in a single day for TSN, RDS and Sportsnet.

Traffic at TSN.ca far outweighed the competition in English Canada, generating 14.2 million page views – a 39% increase over last year’s deadline day – and 1.4 million streams on Feb. 26. Over at Sportsnet, 60,000 viewers watched its live video stream, doubling last year’s traffic, while overall page views were up 58% to 3.8 million.

TSN.ca executive producer Mike Day says the caster ramped up its infrastructure in anticipation of what he says is by far the busiest sports day of the year.

‘We doubled the number of servers, from five or six on a normal day, to the 10 to 15 range on trade deadline day,’ he says. ‘We also took some other stories off our page, especially if they were graphic intensive.’

Day says TSN enhanced its video player, which offered a live stream from the TSN studio to create a better picture. The site also featured a ‘trade tracker’ that was updated as trades were confirmed.

‘We had well over a million page views for the trade tracker alone,’ he notes.

Sportsnet, meanwhile, was the only network to offer a live interactive chat room, which turned out to be one of the most successful components of its online offerings, according to VP of marketing David Ballingall.

‘It allowed for people to jump in and provide their commentary on what was going on…it was very effective at keeping people there,’ he says, adding that the average length of time users were streaming was 33 minutes.

‘That stunned us…much of online video consumption is usually 30-second or one-minute [segments] at the most,’ he adds. Sportsnet also offered a trade tracker, text and e-mail alerts, in addition to a blog that focused on implications of trades for users of the Fantasy Hockey Pool.

Both Day and Ballingall agree that online sports coverage is vital for daytime events such as trade deadline day, since most people cannot get to their TVs.

‘In a lot of ways, the online offering, in my mind, was superior to the TV offering. The different ways that you can customize the content…for sports fans, that’s crucial,’ Ballingall says.

‘It’s all about getting trade info to fans when and where they want it,’ Day adds.

Meanwhile, TSN’s French sister RDS had nearly 900,000 visits to its site, marking an increase of 66% over 2007, while page views amounted to five million – a record for the caster. Fans of the local Montreal Canadiens got the biggest suprise of the day when top goalie Cristobal Huet was traded to the Washington Capitals.

As far as TV broadcasts go, TSN averaged 166,000 viewers over the course of the 10-hour broadcast from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sportsnet placed second with 54,000, while The Score drew 12,000 viewers. The four-hour RDS telecast scored 268,000 viewers from 1-5 p.m.