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It took until nearly 1 a.m. ET on Friday for the NHL to finalize its first-round playoff schedule, but the beginning of one of the most intense tournaments in sports each year is now set—with no shortage of storylines and sizable changes from recent years.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs will begin Saturday afternoon, less than 40 hours after the completion of that first-round game and broadcast schedule. The league needed the results from the final night of regular-season play on Thursday to complete the slate, ending a frenetic race to the postseason, but the NHL enters the playoffs with a very different look.
Among the key developments:
- Sabres. Buffalo won their first division title since 2010, ended the league’s longest playoff drought at 15 years, and will face Boston in the first round as Atlantic Division champions. A fever pitch of fandom in Buffalo after the long postseason absence is already sparking the ticket resale market beyond $400 per ticket for Sunday’s series opener.
- Mammoth. Utah clinched its first playoff berth since arriving to the state in 2024, and its first since 2020 spanning to the franchise’s previous existence as the Arizona Coyotes.
- Golden Knights. Vegas clinched the Pacific Division title, boosted significantly by the late-season head coach firing of Bruce Cassidy and hiring of veteran coach John Tortorella, most recently working as an on-air analyst with ESPN. Since arriving on March 29, Tortorella went on a 7–0–1 run with Vegas, and the team will face the Mammoth in the first round.
- Canada. The country has three of its seven teams in the playoff field between the Canadiens, Senators, and Oilers, and is still seeking its first Stanley Cup title since Montreal in 1993.
- Penguins. Pittsburgh, now under the ownership of the Hoffman Family of Companies after a $1.7 billion in-season acquisition from Fenway Sports Group, clinched its first postseason appearance since 2022, and will face heated in-state rival Philadelphia in the first round. The Penguins’ playoff push could be something of a last hurrah for a veteran core that includes Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang and previously won three Stanley Cups together.
- A different field. The Penguins are also one of six teams in the playoff field after missing last year’s postseason, joining the Sabres, Mammoth, Flyers, Bruins, and Ducks. That six-team turnover is the second-largest amount in league history, trailing a seven-team flip that has happened four times, most recently in 2021.
“I think after some seasons not being able to do it, I think we appreciate it even more,” Crosby said of Pittsburgh’s return to the postseason.
Another Attendance Record
With the end of the regular season, the NHL also set a league attendance record for the fourth consecutive season.
The league’s final total of 23.16 million just surpassed the 2024–2025 figure of 23.01 million. The per-game average of 17,561 this season also represented 97.5% of capacity. While the 2026 Winter Olympics and its dramatic on-ice conclusion involving NHL players provided another big spotlight to the sport, the league drew well on both sides of that event.
The Canadiens again led the league in attendance, selling out all 41 home games at the Bell Centre for a total of 859,442 and a per-game average of 20,962.
Days of Reckoning
The end of the regular season, meanwhile, is also accelerating the start of organizational changes among the 16 teams that failed to qualify for the playoffs.
The Canucks, the NHL’s worst team this season, were firmly part of that wave, firing GM Patrik Allvin on Friday. Allvin spent four years in Vancouver, but the Canucks reached the postseason only once in that time, losing in the second round in 2024.
Similar moves at other teams have already happened, including the Devils firing GM Tom Fitzgerald last week, the Islanders doing the same earlier this month with head coach Patrick Roy and bringing in replacement Peter DeBoer, and the Maple Leafs dismissing GM Brad Treliving on March 30.
More leadership shifts are expected elsewhere in the league in the coming days.
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