Undeterred by the absence of ratings winners the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks, sportscasters will be pushing coverage of star players as the Stanley Cup playoffs get underway Wednesday.

CBC heads into the post-season with an enviable schedule that boasts an Original Six series (Montreal Canadiens vs. Boston Bruins) and a match featuring exported star player Sidney Crosby, while TSN is drumming up its coverage of Russian phenom Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals. French caster RDS, meanwhile, is anticipating record viewership for its upcoming broadcasts of Eastern Conference champs Montreal.

‘Sometimes the dice roll in your favor,’ says CBC sports boss Scott Moore, on the phone from New York, where he met recently with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. ‘Going in, we didn’t have Toronto and Vancouver, so that looked like a downer. But these matchups make it one of the more exciting playoff series in several years.’

Moore cites CBC’s good fortune in obtaining the Pittsburgh Penguins-Ottawa Senators series, in which Nova Scotia native and Penguin Crosby will skate against the Senators.

Moore says CBC and the NHL want to drive a star strategy, in the case of Crosby and Ovechkin, and not just a team-focused approach to the playoffs.

‘Fans will get behind them…there’s a chance both of them will be in the playoffs for a while,’ Moore notes.

The Canadiens’ strong national following will likely also bring more viewers to CBC, which will alternate 7 p.m. timeslots for Hockey Night in Canada between the Montreal and Ottawa series. The Calgary Flames-San Jose Sharks series will air at 10 p.m.

Moore says CBC was able to work with the NHL to ensure that all first-round Canadian games air in primetime. ‘The league delivered strongly for us this year,’ he tells Playback Daily.

TSN VP of production Mark Milliere says the channel is not overly disappointed it didn’t get Crosby and the Penguins.

‘We were going to get either Crosby or Ovechkin…we couldn’t lose, because they’re both big stars,’ he says. Ovechkin and the Capitals, who take on the Philadelphia Flyers, will be a big focus for TSN, which has, potentially, 29 first-round games. Other series on the specialty include New Jersey Devils-New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings-Nashville Predators, Dallas Stars-Anaheim Ducks and Colorado Avalanche-Minnesota Wild.

Milliere believes TSN will also attract Montreal fans for the Washington series, since former Canadiens goalie Cristobal Huet was traded there late in the regular season.

‘He was a fan favorite in Montreal,’ Milliere says. ‘A lot of people are rooting for him to do well.’

TSN French sister RDS is expecting to surpass previous ratings for the Canadiens, which averaged 1.2 million viewers per game when the team made the playoffs in 2006. Montreal, which didn’t make the post-season last year, was crowned Eastern Conference champion this year for the first time since 1989.

‘We will exceed that number this year,’ says spokesperson Katia Aubin. ‘The vibe in Montreal is amazing.’

RDS — set to broadcast up to 60 first-round games — usually averages around 400,000 viewers per playoff match, though Aubin points out that the Ottawa-Pittsburgh series will likely grab more viewers.

CBC’s online offerings include chat rooms, highlights and games in Mandarin, while TSN unveiled a new web design, and will feature a live scoreboard, game tracker, and embedded video player.

Playoff action gets underway Wednesday at 7 p.m. on CBC with a double header featuring Ottawa and Pittsburgh, followed by Calgary vs. San Jose. RDS will air the same slate of games. TSN will kick things off with New York-New Jersey and Colorado-Minnesota.