Holding onto that last wild-card spot in the West, the Vegas Golden Knights host the Seattle Kraken in an important regular-season contest tonight.
The puck is dropping soon, at 10:30 p.m. ET, and the game will be televised nationally on ESPN in the United States. If you don’t have cable, there are also a lot of different ways you can watch a live stream of the game for free or cheap.
If we take free trials out of the equation (you can find some of those options below), Sling TV is easily the cheapest streaming service that includes ESPN. The “Sling Orange” bundle is normally $40 per month–which is still cheaper than other streaming services–but it’s currently being offered for only $15 for your first month.
Once you’ve signed up, you can watch a live stream of the Kraken vs Golden Knights on the Sling TV app or website. You can also watch on ESPN’s digital platforms if you sign in with your Sling credentials.
There are three live-TV streaming services that include ESPN and come with a free trial: Fubo (“Pro” channel plan), YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) and DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” channel plan or above).
All of these services have different long-term pros and cons, but they’re all perfectly fine options if you simply intend to sign up, watch the Kraken vs Golden Knights and then cancel your subscription before you have to pay anything.
If you want to watch Sling, Fubo, DirecTV Stream or YouTube TV from outside of the United States, you’ll need a virtual private network (VPN) to do so. Among many other things, a VPN can hide your IP address and connect you remotely to a digital server located in the US (or whatever country you want). This makes your network “think” you’re physically located in the US, allowing you to bypass any geo-locks and watch the game unrestricted.
There’s no shortage of VPN’s vying for your attention, but we would start out by trying NordVPN. There isn’t a typical free trial, but they will give you your money back within 30 days if you decide you don’t want it. Ultimately, though, it’s likely that it will be become a service that you want to keep long-term, especially if you plan on streaming more content from other countries.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.