The NHL season begins Tuesday night with a tripleheader that includes the Florida Panthers raising a Stanley Cup banner for a 2nd successive year and Mike Sullivan making his New York Rangers training debut versus the Pittsburgh Penguins group he spent much of the past years with.
This is the last 82-game season before the schedule expands to 84 apiece for each of the league's 32 teams starting in 2026-27. It's likewise anticipated to be the final October start before training camp and exhibit play shrink and opening night gets moved up to late September.
The league will take a two-week break in February so players can complete at the Olympics in Milan.
The Panthers are looking to become the very first NHL group to threepeat given that the New York Islanders won 4 champions in a row from 1980-83. They likely won't have captain and top center Aleksander Barkov all season after surgical treatment to fix ripped ligaments in his ideal knee from a noncontact injury during training camp.
NHL players are back in the Olympics for the very first time since 2014 when Canada won its second consecutive gold medal. It's the very first full-fledged international competition including the world's finest since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. The 4 Nations Face-Off with the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland supplied a taste of the sort of quality and pace that can be expected.
Connor McDavid, widely thought about the game's best player, is still chasing the Stanley Cup in his 11th season in the league. After his future was the talk of the sport, McDavid signed a contract extension with the Edmonton Oilers on the eve of the season at a deal rate of $12.5 million annually over two years.
Lights illuminate the ice before an NHL hockey video game between the Seattle Kraken and the Calgary Flames, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Maddy Grassy)
Edmonton and Vegas are 8-1 co-favorites at BetMGM Sportsbook to raise the Cup in June. Carolina and Colorado are 17-2, Dallas is 9-1 and Florida and Tampa Bay are each 14-1. The longest shots on the board are reconstructing Chicago and San Jose at 500-1.
ESPN and TNT air video games nationally in the U.S., with Sportsnet as the rightsholder in Canada.
There are 100 special video games in between ESPN, ABC, ESPN+ and Hulu, including all three on opening night and the Stadium Series when Tampa Bay hosts Boston outdoors at the home of the NFL's Buccaneers. ESPN also has the Stanley Cup Final in June.
TNT has 72 video games, consisting of Washington's season opener with Alex Ovechkin at 897 goals after breaking Wayne Gretzky's record, and the Winter Classic in between the Panthers and Rangers on Jan. 2 at the home of Major League Baseball's Miami Marlins.
More than 900 video games will take place in between October and Feb. 4, consisting of Pittsburgh and Nashville playing twice in Sweden in November. The league will then pause for the Olympic break.
The males's hockey tournament in Milan starts Feb. 11 with Finland vs. Slovakia and Sweden versus host Italy. The gold-medal video game is set for Feb. 22.
NHL play resumes on Feb. 25. The trade deadline is March 6 and the final day of the regular season is April 16. The playoffs start April 18 and the last possible day for the Stanley Cup Final is June 21. Free agency starts July 1.
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