It was a party on New Year’s Eve for TSN, ringing in record-breaking audiences for a preliminary match between Canada and the US at the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships. And the semifinal match that saw Canada triumph over Russia in shootout action was TSN’s ninth most-watched program of all time, with average viewership for the five-game tourney coming in at 1.324 million. Ratings for the Monday night gold medal win over Sweden were not available at press time.

The highly anticipated New Year’s Eve game in Ottawa nabbed 1.6 million viewers, peaking at 2 million from 9:30 pm to 10 pm as Team Canada defeated the US 7-4. The game eclipsed the previous preliminary round high in 2005/06 by 19% and was the most watched program on Canadian television on New Year’s Eve, according to BBM Nielsen. Saturday’s Canada/Russia outing saw audiences peak at 2.688 million viewers from 10 pm to 10:25 pm through the overtime shootout excitement (all numbers 2+).

In all, TSN has aired 28 World Junior games with more than a million viewers since the specialty began broadcasting the popular holiday event in 1991.