Although hockey on television was new to most Canadians, transmission of hockey games had occurred as far back as October 29, 1938 when the 2nd and 3rd periods of a game from Harringay arena in London, England were aired. On February 25, 1940, an experimental TV station in New York, W2XBS, broadcast a hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens to 300 fans. In November of 1946, KTLA in Los Angeles aired games from the Pacific Coast League and in the 1946-47 NHL season, the Rangers were the first NHL team to have their home games on television.

In preparation for the televising of hockey in Canada, an experimental video transmission of a Memorial Cup hockey game from Maple Leaf Gardens in April of 1952 took place. This telecast was a closed circuit viewing for the benefit of executives from CBC, Imperial Oil and the MacLarens advertising agency and all were impressed by Foster Hewitt's call of the game.

But not everyone was convinced that televising hockey games was a good thing. In a March 9, 1949 edition of the Hockey News, NHL President Clarence Campbell charged that the new entertainment medium (TV) was a definite threat to hockey and would keep fans at home instead of at the rinks. Campbell also thought that television's limited field of view would not be able to capture the fast end-to-end rushes that made hockey exciting to watch. However, according to an Imperial Oil Review article from the Spring of 1952, Conn Smythe, the president of Maple Leaf Gardens, disagreed that televising games was a menace to game attendance and he believed that hockey on television would eventually be a great salesman for the game. Even so, due to the potential for a slide in attendance because of televised games, HNIC would sign on at 9:30 pm each Saturday night that first season – one hour after the opening face-off. Games were picked up in progress midway through the second period.

For the 1952-53 season, Smythe asked Imperial Oil for only $100 as a fee for each televised game from Maple Leaf Gardens as he wanted to see how successful the new venture would be. After the great success of the first year, Smythe then sold the rights for $150,000 for a 3-year contract. By the early 1960s, the rights sold for $9 million over six years, or about $21,000 per game. Today, the rights per game can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.