Approaching Stanley Cup Postseason a Special Time of Year for NHL

The National Hockey League’s most competitive time of the year is rapidly approaching.

In four weeks, the race to hoist the NHL’s most valued trophy, the Stanley Cup, will officially be on. By Thursday, April 16, the NHL’s final day of the regular season, all 32 franchises will have skated their 82nd game on their schedules. Two days later, on Saturday, April 18, the Stanley Cup championship tournament will begin.  Eight teams from both the league’s Western and Eastern Conferences will participate.

Leading up to the final countdown on the 2025–2026 season is the excitement surrounding which team will claim the Presidents’ Trophy. As of Thursday, the Central Division’s Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars are neck and neck for claiming the best record. What’s most important to the team that collects the most points in the regular season, the winner is guaranteed home-ice advantage throughout the entire Stanley Cup Playoffs. Colorado leads all NHL teams with 98 points (44–13–10). The second-place Stars are nipping at the Avalanche’s skates, with 96 points (43–15–10).

The Presidents’ Trophy has been awarded to 18 different teams on 39 occasions since its inception during the 1985–1986 season.

When the Stanley Cup postseason gets underway, 16 of the 32 teams will qualify. Eight teams from each conference will be on the hunt for hockey’s top prize. The top three finishers in each conference are guaranteed ice time in the tournament’s opening round. Plus, two Wild Card teams from each conference get to keep their skating days alive in the tournament.

What separates the NHL postseason from the NHL and MLB “second seasons” is that there are no first-round byes.

Twelve clubs qualify for the MLB postseason. The top two division winners receive first-round byes in the postseason. In the NFL, the No. 1 seed in the National Football Conference and American Football Conference automatically advance to the second round; 14 teams qualify for the NFL postseason. NHL.com Senior Writer Dan Rosen reports on Thursday from the league’s general managers meeting in Manalapan, Florida, that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman underscores the importance of the games to be played over the next few weeks for a dash to the postseason.

“If you look at the races for the playoffs, I think it’s virtually impossible to say that the regular season has no meaning,” Bettman said. “To the contrary, every game counts.”

With the Florida Panthers currently in eighth place (last) in the Atlantic Division with 69 points, and 15 games left on their schedule, it is unlikely that the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions (2023–2024 and 2024–2025) will get an opportunity for a three-peat. They are 21 points behind division-leading Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo, which finished in seventh place in the Atlantic Division last season, is on track to break a 14-consecutive-seasons postseason drought.

Given the Panthers’ positioning in the division, they could be the first team that captured the Stanley Cup, then failed to qualify the following season for the playoffs since the 2014–2015 season. When the Los Angeles Kings claimed the Stanley Cup in 2013–2014, the next season, with 95 points, finished in fourth place in the Pacific Division.

Colorado, with 15 games to play this season, is next in action on Friday in Chicago taking on the Blackhawks. The Stars, who have 14 regular-season games left to skate, on Saturday evening will be visiting the Minnesota Wild.  Both the Avalanche and Wild met at Denver’s Ball Arena on Wednesday, with Minnesota escaping with a 2–1 overtime victory.

Once the Stanley Cup tournament commences in mid-April, the playoffs could run as late as June 21, for a Game 7 in the Final round, if necessary.

After an NHL champion is crowned in June, when training camps open in mid-September, the 2026-2027 season will expand to 84 games. The expansion of the regular season is another topic Bettman addressed in Florida.

“Going to 84 games, what that really does is balance off divisional play,” Bettman said. “Every team will play every other team twice at home and twice away, which I think is good so we’re not doing any rotation within the division. If anything, I think it makes it more impactful.”

All four rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs are best-of-seven series—first round, second round, Conference Finals, and Stanley Cup Final.

Whereas the Sabres are the Cinderella story of the regular season, the last time they appeared in a Stanley Cup Final was in 1998–1999. Buffalo lost in six games to Dallas. Game 6, 27 years ago, went to triple-overtime in Buffalo, with Stars’ Brett Hull scoring the winning goal. It’s been 27 years since the Sabres qualified for the Stanley Cup Final.  This is also Dallas’s only NHL championship, so far, collected in their 33 seasons.

Stanley Cup postseason games will be shown on several media platforms including ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, Sling, and Fubo.