NHL Season Opens With Carolina Raising Their Stanley Cup Banner
The 2026-27 NHL season begins on Tuesday with the Carolina Hurricanes raising their Stanley Cup banner before hosting the Florida Panthers, the first of five games on opening night.
It is the start of the league's first 84-game regular season in more than three decades.
Banner Night in Raleigh
Carolina open proceedings at 5pm Eastern at Lenovo Center, commemorating a second championship and their first since 2006. Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jordan Staal leads them into the defence of the title.
The opponents make it a meeting of the last three Stanley Cup winners, and the game also brings Brady Tkachuk's Panthers debut alongside his brother Matthew.
The rest of the night pairs Montreal with Toronto at Scotiabank Arena, the New York Rangers with Boston in an Original Six matchup at TD Garden, Vancouver with Edmonton, and Chicago with Vegas to close things out at 10.30pm Eastern. The Golden Knights lost last season's final to Carolina in six games.
Gavin McKenna, the first overall pick, could make his NHL debut in the Toronto-Montreal game.
A Longer Season
The expansion from 82 games to 84 is the headline change under the new collective bargaining agreement, taking the league to 1,344 games in total. It is the first time the NHL has played an 84-game schedule since 1993-94.
The two additional fixtures are both divisional, meaning every team now plays each of its seven division rivals four times. To accommodate them, the preseason has been cut from six games to four, and the regular season now fits inside a 194-day window running to 10 April.
Starting in September is itself unusual. This is only the second NHL regular season to include games in the month, after 2007-08 opened overseas.
The new agreement also ends the use of amateur tryouts.
Beyond Opening Night
The schedule includes two European fixtures, with Carolina and Seattle meeting in Helsinki for the Global Series Finland and Chicago facing Ottawa in Dusseldorf for the German leg.
The first outdoor game of the season comes in Winnipeg, where the Jets host Montreal in the Heritage Classic, with the Winter Classic to follow later in the campaign.
Vegas host Carolina in December in the first rematch of last season's final.
TNT begins its coverage on Wednesday, a night after ESPN's opening tripleheader.
The compressed calendar is a consequence of fitting two extra games per team into a season that still has to finish in time for the playoffs. Teams will play more often on back-to-back nights as a result, and the divisional weighting means rivalries carry more of the schedule than in recent years.
Carolina begin as favourites in the East on the back of their title, though the Panthers, Rangers and a Toronto side introducing McKenna all have designs on the Eastern Conference.
