Stanley Cup Playoffs: Opening Day
The NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs began on April 18 with a full first‑round schedule published by The Athletic and bracket pages from Yahoo Sports and Sports Illustrated. ( ) Opening‑day matchups include Dallas vs. Minnesota as a highlighted Western Conference series. (nytimes.com)
The Stanley Cup Playoffs opened Saturday, April 18, with three Game 1s starting a two-month chase for the National Hockey League championship. (nhl.com) Opening day began with Ottawa at Carolina, continued with Minnesota at Dallas, and ended with Philadelphia at Pittsburgh, according to the league’s first-round schedule. Carolina’s 2-0 win over Ottawa made the Hurricanes the first team to take a 1-0 series lead. (nhl.com) The league announced that the first round began on Saturday, April 18, and runs through a schedule that can extend to Sunday, May 3 if any series need seven games. Every first-round matchup is a best-of-seven series with home ice set by seeding. (nhl.com) Dallas-Minnesota is one of the opening-day Western Conference series, and Game 1 was set for 4:30 p.m. Central time at American Airlines Center in Dallas. Dallas earned home-ice advantage by finishing second in the Central Division, eight points ahead of Minnesota. (nhl.com) The Stars and Wild entered this matchup after spending 147 straight days in second and third place in the Central Division, making the pairing one of the most stable races on the bracket. Dallas also beat Minnesota in six games in both the 2016 and 2023 first rounds. (nhl.com) This postseason will produce a new Stanley Cup champion for the first time since 2015, because last year’s champion is not in the field. The league said 11 of the 16 playoff teams are either chasing a first title or trying to end a long championship drought. (nhl.com; nhl.com) The bracket also opened with two rivalry storylines in the East: Carolina and Ottawa meeting in the playoffs for the first time, and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia renewing the “Battle of Pennsylvania” for the first time since the 2018 first round. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are opening another run together for Pittsburgh. (nhl.com) The rest of the first round rolls into Sunday, April 19, and Monday, April 20, as the full 16-team field begins to sort itself out. By Saturday night, the 2026 playoffs had already moved from bracket talk to results. (nhl.com; nhl.com)
