Stanley Cup Final drew 3rd-lowest U.S. ratings since 2006

The 2016 Stanley Cup Final was not watched by many.

The six-game series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and San Jose Sharks averaged four million viewers, making it the third lowest-rated final since 2006, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data.

As a point of comparison, the NBA Finals on ABC are averaging a 18.1 million viewers per game, reports Anthony Crupi of Ad Age.

Part of the issue was that Games 2 and 3 were aired on NBCSN instead of NBC, with the former reaching only about 70 percent of all TV homes in the U.S.

On top of that, the series-deciding Game 6 went head-to-head with "Game Of Thrones"; hockey drew 5.41 million viewers in the most-watched match of the series, but those numbers were dwarfed by Thrones, as the fantasy drama was watched by 7.6 million.

Perhaps if the Sharks could have pulled a Jon Snow and came back from the dead to force a Game 7, there would have been an uptick.

Copyright (C) 2016 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.