The NHL is back on the ice, and the 2026–27 season isn’t simply picking up where last season left off.
Training camps opened last week. Preseason games began September 19. And by September 29, all of this gets real.
This season brings a longer schedule, a shorter preseason, new faces in new places and several teams entering October looking very different from the ones that left the ice last spring.
Welcome back to hockey.
84 Games. Less Time to Get Ready.
For the first time since 1993–94, NHL teams will play an 84-game regular season, up from 82.
Those two additional games aren’t random. Every team gets another home game and another road game against divisional opponents, bringing the divisional schedule to 28 games per team.
The tradeoff came before the regular season even begins.
The preseason was reduced to four games per team under the new collective bargaining agreement, leaving coaches with a compressed training camp to evaluate players, settle roster battles and install systems before opening night.
And that makes these preseason games a little more interesting than usual.
There simply isn’t much time to figure things out.
The Champs Get the First Word
Opening night begins in Carolina.
The Carolina Hurricanes, fresh off winning the 2026 Stanley Cup, will raise their championship banner before hosting the Florida Panthers on September 29.
And there’s history sitting underneath that matchup.
Florida won consecutive Stanley Cups in 2024 and 2025 before missing the playoffs last season. Carolina then took the crown in 2026.
Now Florida returns with Brady Tkachuk, acquired from Ottawa during the offseason, joining his brother Matthew as the Panthers try to get themselves back into the postseason picture.
That’s Game 1.
Not a bad way to start.
Some Familiar Teams Look Very Different
Florida isn’t alone.
Toronto enters the season with Sergei Bobrovsky as its new No. 1 goalie and the biggest young name of the summer: Gavin McKenna, selected first overall in the 2026 NHL Draft.
McKenna could make his NHL debut immediately against Montreal on opening night.
Edmonton begins another pursuit of the Stanley Cup with Mike Babcock behind the bench, while Chicago welcomes Patrick Kane back.
Across the league, coaching changes, trades, free-agent signings and young players fighting their way onto NHL rosters have created plenty to sort out before anybody starts talking seriously about April.
And Then There Are the Kids
Preseason hockey doesn’t tell us who’s winning the Stanley Cup.
It can tell us who deserves another look.
Anaheim’s Beckett Sennecke already made his case with a preseason hat trick, while McKenna is getting his first taste of NHL competition with Toronto.
Those performances won’t decide a season in September, but this is exactly what preseason is for: seeing which prospects are ready, which roster battles become real and which young players make it difficult for their teams to send them anywhere.
By opening night, some of them will have played their way onto NHL rosters.
Others won’t.
That’s part of the fun.
Opening Night Is Loaded
Five games officially launch the regular season on Tuesday, September 29.
Florida visits defending champion Carolina. Montreal meets Toronto. The Rangers visit Boston. Vancouver travels to Edmonton. Chicago closes the night in Vegas against the defending Western Conference champion Golden Knights.
Then on September 30, Pittsburgh visits Philadelphia in a rematch of the first round of last season’s playoffs, followed by Los Angeles at Colorado.
And after that?
1,344 regular-season games.
Every team plays 84.
All 32 teams will even hit the ice on the same day twice—October 13 and again for the regular-season finale on April 10.
Welcome Back to the Ice
Right now, nobody needs to win anything.
Preseason is where the roster gets trimmed, lines get tested, new teammates learn each other and young players try to make themselves impossible to ignore.
But September 29 is coming quickly.
Then the records count.
The races begin.
And somewhere among 32 teams and 1,344 games is the team that’ll be holding the Stanley Cup when this is all over.
The ice is back.
So are we.
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