Twenty-six million people on this side of the Atlantic tuned into NBC and Peacock on Sunday morning as Jack Hughes scored the golden goal in Team USA’s 2-1 Olympic triumph over Canada, according to Nielsen ratings released Tuesday.

With an added 8.7 million viewers watching the overtime period in Canada, the matchup peaked with a North American audience of about 34 million.

The gold medal game, with its 8:15 a.m. puck drop in Milan, Italy, is the most-watched sporting event to begin before 9 a.m., according to Nielsen.

It’s the second-most-watched hockey game in NBC’s history, trailing only the 2010 Olympic final when Canada defeated the U.S. in overtime. That game, with a 3:15 p.m. start time on the East Coast, averaged 27.6 million viewers.

The now-completed Olympics featured a surge in ratings for NBC and Peacock, with a 96% growth in viewership over the 2022 Games in Beijing.

This year’s broadcasts drew an average of 23.5 million viewers in the U.S., the most for the Winter Games since the 2014 festivities in Sochi, Russia.

“I feel in so many ways that these Winter Olympics exceeded our expectations. We were reminded that the Olympics are the most exciting, unpredictable and biggest stage in sports,” said Molly Solomon, the executive producer of NBC’s Olympics coverage. “And what I think came together in Italy was that the settings were stunningly beautiful, the access we had to the athletes and their lives was unprecedented.”