The Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers clash in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals tonight. Either way, history will be made–either the Panthers will win their first Stanley Cup in history, or the Oilers will become the first team since 1942 to overcome a 3-0 series deficit to win the Cup.
Game 7 starts at 8:00 p.m. ET. In the United States, it will be televised on ABC, but if you’re looking to stream the NHL playoffs without cable, we’ve compiled the top options for watching a live stream of the game for free or cheap.
In the United States, you can watch a live stream of Game 7 on Fubo (“Pro” channel package), YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) or DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” channel package or above). All three of these live-TV streaming services include ABC (available live in most markets) among their channel packages, and all offer a free trial, allowing you to watch tonight’s game without paying anything at all.
The Fubo free trial is seven days long compared to five for YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream. Fubo also has ABC live in a few more markets than the other two, so we’d recommend going with that as your first option, but all things considered, any three of these options should work perfectly fine for watching a live stream of tonight’s game for free.
If you’ve exhausted all of your free-trial options, and you just want the bare-minimum cheapest way to watch a live stream of the game, then ESPN+ is what you want. ESPN+ costs $11 per month, or, if you want to bundle it with Disney+ and Hulu, you can get all three for a total of just $15 per month.
What’s particularly great about this option, besides the fact that it’s cheap, is that anyone in the United States can watch the game. You don’t have to worry about what market you’re in. Plus, it’s available in English, Spanish and ASL.
For those who are outside of the United and don’t have a good way to watch a live stream of Game 7, you may want to check out a virtual private network (VPN). With a VPN, you can hide your IP address/location and connect to a digital server in the United States. This makes it look as though you’re physically located in the US, allowing you to use location-restricted services such as Fubo, YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream or ESPN+.
We recommend NordVPN thanks to its reliability, speed and current sale price, but there are a number of good options out there. You can check out our ranking of the 18 best VPN services for some other choices.
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.