No one is relishing the thought of a gold medal game featuring Team Canada more than the Olympic broadcast consortium, led by CTV.

If the numbers for the Canucks’ opening weekday game at the Winter Olympics is any indication, the gold medal match on Sunday, Feb. 28 — should Canada qualify — will deliver massive ratings with the added advantage of BBM’s Personal People Meters.

The consortium says 6.2 million viewers across three channels watched Canada rout Norway 8-0 on Tuesday, yielding the Games’ highest average audience to date with 5.7 million viewers. By comparison, the last big-ticket hockey event — the Canada/U.S. final at the World Juniors in January — averaged 5.3 million viewers on TSN alone.

The Olympic numbers are high, but difficult to compare, as the consortium provides cumulative ratings across its 11 channels for some events — such as Sunday’s freestyle skiing men’s moguls competition, in which Alexandre Bilodeau won Canada’s first gold — while others mention only some of the channels.

Ratings were also favorable for the ladies snowboard cross event earlier Tuesday, which netted 3.7 million viewers on CTV, V/CPAC and RDS as Vancouver’s Maëlle Ricker won Canada’s second gold medal of the Games.

Meanwhile, CTV’s Olympic coverage is taking a bite out of its top-rated winter show American Idol. The reality competition last week averaged 1.1 million and 1.2 million for its Tuesday and Wednesday episodes, respectively, on A, as the season’s 24 semi-finalists were selected. The numbers are less than half of Idol‘s weekly audience, though Tuesday’s ep was up against Team Canada’s first game of the Olympics.

Over on NBC, the network finished ahead of Fox’s Idol on Wednesday night — which marks the first time that Idol had lost a timeslot in six years, according to Variety. NBC nabbed 29 million viewers for American skiing star Lindsey Vonn’s gold medal downhill run versus 18 million for Idol.