Greg WyshynskiApr 17, 2026, 10:30 AM ETCloseGreg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.Follow on XMultiple Authors
play0:44Nathan MacKinnon’s 51st goal of the season seals Avs’ winNathan MacKinnon’s 51st goal of the season seals Avs’ win
play0:43Jack Eichel wins it for the Golden Knights in OTJack Eichel wins it for the Golden Knights in OT
play0:51Kirill Kaprizov nets hat trick to put Wild back in frontKirill Kaprizov scores his third goal of the game to restore the Wild’s lead late on the power play vs. the Red Wings.
play1:15Sabres win first division title in 16 yearsTage Thompson scores twice as the Sabres defeat the Blackhawks to claim the Atlantic Division title.
play0:41Cole Caufield scores 50th goal of the season for CanadiensCole Caufield scores 50th goal of the season for Canadiens
play1:17Martone’s OT power-play goal lifts Flyers past Bruins, 2-1Martone’s OT power-play goal lifts Flyers past Bruins, 2-1
Sidney Crosby explains why Penguins’ rivalry with the Flyers is so special (2:19)Sidney Crosby joins “The Pat McAfee Show” to preview the Penguins’ playoff matchup against the Flyers. (2:19)
Nathan MacKinnon’s 51st goal of the season seals Avs’ winNathan MacKinnon’s 51st goal of the season seals Avs’ win
Kirill Kaprizov nets hat trick to put Wild back in frontKirill Kaprizov scores his third goal of the game to restore the Wild’s lead late on the power play vs. the Red Wings.
Kirill Kaprizov scores his third goal of the game to restore the Wild’s lead late on the power play vs. the Red Wings.
Sabres win first division title in 16 yearsTage Thompson scores twice as the Sabres defeat the Blackhawks to claim the Atlantic Division title.
Tage Thompson scores twice as the Sabres defeat the Blackhawks to claim the Atlantic Division title.
Cole Caufield scores 50th goal of the season for CanadiensCole Caufield scores 50th goal of the season for Canadiens
Martone’s OT power-play goal lifts Flyers past Bruins, 2-1Martone’s OT power-play goal lifts Flyers past Bruins, 2-1
Meanwhile, in the East: Are the Buffalo Sabres for real?
Speaking of returns to glory, is the Tampa Bay hype legit?
Is Montreal’s Juraj Slafkovsky, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield the best line in hockey?
Who are some of the other players worth watching in the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
As a service to fans who have a general interest in the National Hockey League but have no idea what has happened since the Florida Panthers raised the Stanley Cup by defeating the Edmonton Oilers in June 2025, we’re happy to provide this FAQ as a guide to the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.
And for you die-hard puckheads: Here is your official refresher before the games begin with a tripleheader on Saturday. Enjoy!
Read more: Full schedule Megapreview Playoff Central Stanley Cup odds Flaws for each team Player, coach, GM predictions
It’s still kind of amazing that a franchise that went 25 years between playoff series wins is now not only assumed to be in the postseason — but playing for the Stanley Cup.
The Panthers were seeking their third straight championship — winning back-to-back Cups against the Oilers in 2024 and 2025 — but finished 15 points out of a playoff spot this season.
But mostly, these Panthers had just played a lot of hockey over the past three seasons — please recall they lost in the Stanley Cup Final to Vegas in 2023 before their consecutive championship runs. There will still be raucous parties at the Elbo Room in Fort Lauderdale this June. They’ll just have significant less hockey hardware this time.
Other playoff teams last season that lost their invitations to this season’s party: the Toronto Maple Leafs and New Jersey Devils, who both fired their general managers this season; the Washington Capitals, in what could be Alex Ovechkin’s last season; and the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets in the Western Conference.
An elite team got even better at the trade deadline, as Colorado added center Nicolas Roy from Toronto and old friend Nazem Kadri from Calgary, a key center on their 2022 Stanley Cup team.
The Avalanche are the favorite to win the Stanley Cup entering the postseason at +300 on Draft Kings, ahead of the Carolina Hurricanes (+475). But to win the Cup, the Avalanche will have to overcome one of the NHL’s most reliable hexes: the Presidents’ Trophy curse. Since 1985-86, there have been 39 teams to finish with the NHL’s best record. Only eight of them went on to win the Stanley Cup — and an equal number of them lost in the opening round of the playoffs. Spooky.
Colorado draws the Los Angeles Kings in the first round. The Kings do avoid having to play the Oilers for the fifth straight first round, having lost the previous four series. But drawing the Avalanche might leave them not sighing for relief but gasping for air.
Nathan MacKinnon’s 51st goal of the season seals Avs’ win
Nathan MacKinnon’s 51st goal of the season seals Avs’ win
McDavid and fellow superstar Leon Draisaitl carried the Oilers to back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances, losing both times to the Panthers. Last October, McDavid gave the Oilers a clear window to win with him still on the roster, foregoing potential free agency to sign a two-year contract extension through 2027-28.
The Oilers open with the Anaheim Ducks, who returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2018 thanks to first-year head coach Joel Quenneville. If they get past the Ducks, the Oilers could face the Pacific Division-leading Vegas Golden Knights … and the coach they hired with eight games left in the season.
The Golden Knights shocked the hockey world by firing head coach Bruce Cassidy with just eight games left in the regular season. The Knights were spiraling after the Winter Olympic break, posting the league’s second-worst record ahead of only the moribund Vancouver Canucks.
“Torts,” who won a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004, last coached the Philadelphia Flyers for three seasons (2022-2025) before rejoining ESPN as a studio analyst. This is his first playoff appearance since taking Columbus to the postseason in 2020. The Knights are Tortorella’s sixth NHL team, in a coaching career that spans all the way back to 2000.
Vegas went 7-0-1 in those eight games and looked like a Tortorella team, leading the NHL in that span with a 1.88 goals-against average. He has agreed to coach the remainder of the season — someone hired for the present, for a team that needed a short-term boost.
(Please note that Vegas might have started a trend here, as the New York Islanders replaced coach Patrick Roy with Peter DeBoer with just four games left in their season. Alas, it was too late to get the Islanders into the postseason.)
Jack Eichel wins it for the Golden Knights in OTJack Eichel wins it for the Golden Knights in OT
Indeed. In just the second season for the NHL’s newest franchise, the Mammoth qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs as the first wild card in the Western Conference. Coach André Tourigny’s team improved just three points in the standings season over season, but Utah feels like a different team — and not just because they have an actual mascot instead of being referred to as the “Hockey Club.”
Young stars like Dylan Guenther (40 goals), Logan Cooley (0.80 points per game) and JJ Peterka (25 goals) will get their first tastes of playoff action. Veterans like Clayton Keller (88 points) and Nick Schmaltz (33 goals) return after long playoff absences. Backstopping all of it is goalie Karel Vejmelka, who appeared in an NHL-high 64 games this season for Utah.
The future is bright in Salt Lake City, as the Mammoth have one of the NHL’s robust prospect pipelines. But they’re acting like the future is now, having acquired high-profile defenseman MacKenzie Weegar from the Flames at the trade deadline.
It’s easily the Central Division opening-round slugfest between the Dallas Stars and the Minnesota Wild.
The Stars have reached the Western Conference finals for three consecutive seasons, losing to Vegas once and then the Oilers twice. This time they have a new head coach in Glen Gulutzan but much of the same cast as last year’s run. That includes two 45-goal scorers in winger Jason Robertson and center Wyatt Johnston, as well as star winger Mikko Rantanen (1.20 points per game) who was winning playoff series seemingly on his own last season.
The Wild, meanwhile, took the season’s biggest swing on the trade market: landing Quinn Hughes from the Vancouver Canucks in a December blockbuster. Hughes had a transformative effect on the Wild, who went 17-5-5 heading into the Olympic break — where Team USA, constructed by Minnesota GM Bill Guerin and featuring a handful of his players, won Olympic men’s gold for the first time since 1980.
While Hughes generates offense from the back end, the Wild were led by a pair of star scoring wingers up front: Kirill Kaprizov, who scored 45 goals after signing a record-setting $136 million contract last September; and Matt Boldy, who was right behind him with 42 goals this season.
Whether or not it’s “fair” that they meet, these two titans will clash in Round 1 to earn the right to potentially play Colorado in Round 2.
Kirill Kaprizov nets hat trick to put Wild back in front
The Sabres snapped their NHL-record 14-season playoff drought with one of their best regular seasons in franchise history: a .665 points percentage that earned Buffalo its first division title since the 2009-10 season, a team also coached by current Sabres bench boss Lindy Ruff in a previous stint.
The turning point in Buffalo’s season, coincidental or not, was when the team replaced general manager Kevyn Adams with senior advisor Jarmo Kekalainen, who was previously the general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets. From that moment in December until the end of the season, the Sabres had the NHL’s best record (36-9-5) and were second overall in team offense and defense.
There are reasons to believe this is not a fluke. Buffalo has balanced scoring, led by star center Tage Thompson (40 goals) and forward Alex Tuch (33 goals), a pending free agent. The Sabres have one of the league’s top defensemen in Rasmus Dahlin, and they finished tied for third in the NHL in team save percentage (.899) thanks to goalies Alex Lyon and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen.