The 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs are proving to be a breakout when it comes to online offerings, as each Canuck broadcaster tries its own digital power play. Whether it’s online video streaming or offering up new forms of digital content, the casters are pulling out all the stops in a bid to keep hockey fans engaged right up until Lord Stanley’s Mug is hoisted in June.

Hard times can impede innovation, but the recession hasn’t put a crimp in CBC’s web playoff content. ‘No matter what the economic climate is, viewers expect a certain level from Hockey Night in Canada, and that’s what we’ve got to give them,’ says Sherali Najak, HNIC executive producer.

The HNIC website offers a video package of the previous day’s highlights, along with an archive of segments from on-air features Coach’s Corner, Hotstove and Inside Hockey, with no shortage of advertisers and sponsors in Scotiabank, Rogers Cable, Gatorade, Suzuki, McDonald’s and Viagra.

The network is also streaming its broadcast games live and free, noting a 7% increase in streams over 2008 first-round games. The streaming proved particularly handy when there was overlap between the Pittsburgh Penguins-Philadelphia Flyers series and the Vancouver Canucks-St. Louis Blues matchup. CBC aired the first period of a Pens game and then switched over to the Canucks’ start.

Those who wanted to continue following the Battle of Pennsylvania could simply watch on their PCs. Until the Ceeb is up and running with its sports specialty channel, CBC.ca is a useful alternate screen for the main network.

New this year is the on-air I-Desk feature with HNIC Sirius Satellite Radio host Jeff Marek and journalist Scott Morrison. According to Najak, the concept is to incorporate the Internet into the traditional broadcast.

The hosts relay the buzz from blogs and chat rooms and, after the night’s games, share news gleaned from the web, such as player injuries and other lineup changes. This gives them the jump on the next morning’s headlines, since newspapers tend to post their stories online the night before they appear in print. Morrison and Marek also respond live to viewer e-mails.

Najak says the I-Desk will likely return next season. He acknowledges, however, that over the course of the playoffs, the feature has sometimes come across as just another pair of on-air pundits – good as they are – without an overt association with the Internet.

‘When there is something interesting on one of the blogs… we’ll [refer to] it,’ he explains. ‘If there isn’t anything – and it’s just stuff that’s known out there and it’s nothing new – then we’re not going to force the content. Then [we do] the news of the day. And Scott and Jeff are really good at that.’

They and other HNIC personalities have also fired off posts on Twitter, with content ranging from insider reports at team practices to more lighthearted fare, such as correspondent Scott Oakes’ musings on just how much hair gel colleague Marc Crawford applies before going on-air.

Twitter – which allows senders to share their every thought and move with subscriber-followers in ‘tweets’ of up to 140 characters in length – is certainly a media sensation, but has lost some of its luster, outside of hard-core user circles. A recent Nielsen Online study in the U.S. indicates that, despite the service’s phenomenal growth rate – highest among member communities – 60% of those who sign up don’t return the following month.

Over at TSN, the brain trust remains hesitant to get its hosts on Twitter – with the exception of Maggie the Macaque, a simian prognosticator that predicted only two of eight first-round series correctly. (Sample tweet excerpt from Maggie: ‘note to self/handlers: get extra bananas for tomorrow.’) Maggie is set to retire after these playoffs.

‘We really believe that people don’t care what [TSN Hockey Insider] Bob McKenzie’s having for lunch,’ says Mark Milliere, TSN VP of production. ‘That’s not the kind of stuff that we want to get into posting. We’re trying to find our way on what’s a value-added Twitter application from our guys.’

When a news story breaks, TSN prefers to get the info out through text alerts to those who have signed up for them. Also, the channel has allowed fans to fire questions at McKenzie and contributor Darren Dreger during games. ‘It’s something that seems to be of real value to the viewer,’ Milliere says.

TSN has archived all its broadcast games for free video-on-demand on its site, and streamed some first-round games live. In the first year of a new deal with the National Hockey League, TSN had more playoff games than ever, airing them on its main channel and on the new TSN2 when there has been a scheduling conflict.

But since top BDU Rogers Cable only started carrying the secondary station on May 19 – into the playoffs’ third round – many viewers were previously out of luck to see some games, so, as with CBC, streaming offered a solution.

RDS, TSN’s francophone sister, streams all games featuring the hometown Montreal Canadiens, but at a price. For $80, subscribers get all Habs regular-season and playoff games (Ed: all four of them… ouch), as well as bonus Stanley Cup Finals coverage.

Robert Turcotte, RDS’ VP programming, interactive media and business development, says the reason the specialty charges for streaming comes down to the fact that, unlike the CBC, it collects fee-for-carriage from the BDUs.

‘The [BDUs] are sensitive to the kind of stuff that you’re putting on the web,’ says Turcotte. ‘If I’m giving the content on a free basis, then I understand that the cable operator is getting hurt, but we are, too, because we’re getting a share of what they’re getting from their customers. If I have so many people coming to my website on a free basis that they don’t need to subscribe to the service on cable, then we have an issue.’

RDS says its website was seeing more than 268,000 unique visitors per day in the Canadiens’ first-round encounter with the Boston Bruins – 17% higher than during the regular season – but the channel inevitably experienced a decline after the Bruins swept out the Habs.

Meanwhile, the New York-based league itself has been offering American fans its NHL GameCenter Live video package at NHL.com. A US$20 pass gives users access to a night’s worth of out-of-market games; but as the playoffs progress and more games are televised nationally, the pass becomes less feasible, and games are sold individually. The service is not available to Canadian fans – who traditionally make up the majority of the site’s visitors – because all the games are covered here on-air by CBC, TSN and RDS.

NHL.com has gone all out for this year’s playoffs. Whereas it previously offered a post-season microsite, this time the main site is all one big playoff bonanza. One of the key new features is the web-only Cisco All-Access Pre-Game Show, a program posted each day at 4:30 p.m. ET and covering all the action around the league.

A couple of weeks into the playoffs, the NHL’s efforts were paying off. It says that its site’s U.S. UVs were up 11% over the 2008 playoffs, while international UVs were up 23%. Video starts were up 104%, and GameCenter Live subscriptions were up 42%, with revenue up 92%.

But to hear it from Andre Mika, NHL SVP/executive in charge of new media programming, the site is a little like a hockey team looking to improve in the off-season.

‘We’ll always be in a perpetual beta,’ Mika says. ‘We continue to listen to our fans and to people who have suggestions. And we just continue to try to tweak and make the experience better and better.’