Stanley Cup field set
The NHL regular season finished and the 16‑team Stanley Cup playoff bracket is now locked, with Game 1s scheduled across April 18–20. (cbssports.com) NBC Sports Philadelphia has already published the Flyers‑Penguins first‑round schedule, bringing that rivalry straight into postseason play. (nbcsportsphiladelphia.com)
The Stanley Cup playoff bracket is set, and all eight first-round series open between Saturday, April 18, and Monday, April 20. (nhl.com) The National Hockey League field includes 16 teams: Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Carolina and Pittsburgh from the East’s division top three and wild cards Boston and Ottawa; Colorado, Dallas, Vegas and Edmonton from the West’s division top three and wild cards Los Angeles and Utah. (nhl.com) The first three Game 1s are Carolina vs. Ottawa at 3 p.m. Eastern on April 18, Dallas vs. Minnesota at 5:30 p.m., and Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia at 8 p.m. (nhl.com) Sunday, April 19 adds four more openers: Colorado vs. Los Angeles, Tampa Bay vs. Montreal, Buffalo vs. Boston, and Vegas vs. Utah. Edmonton vs. Anaheim starts Monday, April 20, at 10 p.m. Eastern. (nhl.com) The bracket follows the NHL’s divisional format: the top three teams in each division qualify automatically, two wild cards are added in each conference, and first-round pairings are set by division finish rather than a 1-through-8 conference seed. Regulation wins are the first tiebreaker, followed by regulation-plus-overtime wins. (cbssports.com) That format produced one of the bracket’s closest East matchups. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia both finished with 98 points in the Metropolitan Division, but the Penguins took second place with 34 regulation wins to the Flyers’ 27. (cbssports.com) NBC Sports Philadelphia reported the Flyers-Penguins series opens Saturday night in Pittsburgh, with Game 2 on Monday, April 20, before the series shifts to Philadelphia for Game 3 on Thursday, April 23. (nbcsportsphiladelphia.com) The East also brings Buffalo’s first playoff appearance in 14 seasons. The Sabres won the Atlantic Division with 109 points and drew a Boston team that claimed the conference’s first wild card with 100 points. (nhl.com; cbssports.com) In the West, Colorado enters with the Presidents’ Trophy, awarded to the league’s best regular-season record, and opens against Los Angeles. Dallas-Minnesota and Edmonton-Anaheim also pit division neighbors against each other, while Vegas faces Utah after closing the regular season on a 7-0-1 run. (nhl.com; cbssports.com) The playoffs begin Saturday with one certainty the league has not had since 2015: the defending Stanley Cup champion is already out, so a new winner will be crowned this spring. (nhl.com)
