- Florida is +650 to win the 2026-27 Stanley Cup, the shortest price on the board, despite missing last season’s playoffs entirely.
- The defending champion Carolina Hurricanes sit at +750, level with Colorado, after running back their roster.
- Five games open the season Tuesday, headlined by Carolina hosting Florida as the Hurricanes raise their second championship banner.
- The Vegas Golden Knights, last season’s Western Conference champion, price at +900 under first-year head coach Ryan Craig.
RALEIGH, N.C. – The Carolina Hurricanes open defense of their Stanley Cup championship Tuesday at home against the Florida Panthers, one of five games launching the NHL’s 2026-27 season. Florida enters as the market’s outright favorite to win it all at +650 legal sports betting odds, even though the Panthers missed the playoffs entirely a year ago.
Five Openers, One Banner Raised
Carolina hosts Florida at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Lenovo Center, where the Hurricanes will raise a banner for their second Stanley Cup, and first since 2006, before the puck drops.
Four more games complete the opening-night schedule – Montreal at Toronto (-115), the New York Rangers at Boston (-125), Vancouver at Edmonton (-270), and Chicago at Vegas (-245), which enters as the reigning Western Conference champion after falling to Carolina in six games last June. The slate opens the league’s first 84-game regular season since 1993-94, expanded from 82 under the new collective bargaining agreement.
The 2026-27 Stanley Cup Futures Board
The rest of the board sits behind Florida in a tight cluster at legal Stanley Cup sportsbooks.
| Team | Odds | Implies |
|---|---|---|
| Florida Panthers | +650 | 13.3% |
| Carolina Hurricanes | +750 | 11.8% |
| Colorado Avalanche | +750 | 11.8% |
| Edmonton Oilers | +850 | 10.5% |
| Vegas Golden Knights | +900 | 10.0% |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | +1200 | 7.7% |
| Minnesota Wild | +1300 | 7.1% |
| Dallas Stars | +1500 | 6.2% |
Florida Prices As Favorite After A Lost Season
Florida’s +650 is a notable vote of confidence for a team that finished 37-36-3 and missed the playoffs entirely last season, ending a postseason streak that dated to 2018-19. Captain Aleksander Barkov tore his ACL and MCL in training camp and never played, Matthew Tkachuk missed 47 games recovering from offseason surgery, and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky posted a 3.05 goals-against average and an .878 save percentage across 51 games, the second sub-.900 season of his 16-year career.
The Panthers had also played 314 games over the previous three seasons, the most of any team in NHL history across that span, an NHL.com recap said. The price is a bet that health returns along with the talent; the wear that broke the roster down last season hasn’t disappeared just because Barkov and Tkachuk are expected back.
Carolina And Colorado Split Second, Vegas Retools
Carolina and Colorado share the next spot at +750, both priced shorter than Vegas, the team Carolina eliminated in a six-game Final. Carolina kept its championship roster almost entirely intact – the lone notable departure is goaltender Frederik Andersen, the regular-season starter who lost the net to Brandon Bussi for the last three games of the Final and then signed with Edmonton in free agency – and carries $8.18 million in cap space into the season.
Colorado won the Presidents’ Trophy with a league-best 55-16-11 record last season before Vegas swept the Avalanche out of the Western Conference Final, a reminder that a great regular season buys home ice, not a title. Vegas, which beat Colorado before losing the Final to Carolina in six games, sits behind both at +900.
The Golden Knights promoted Craig, a first-time NHL head coach, on June 17, three days after the Cup loss. They added forward Victor Olofsson in free agency to help replace the departed Pavel Dorofeyev, and picked up defenseman Parker Wotherspoon from Pittsburgh by trade.
Where The Value Sits
The split by merit runs on health more than name recognition. Florida’s price bets on a full recovery from Barkov and Tkachuk that hasn’t happened in a real game yet, while Carolina’s number, identical to Colorado’s, undersells a roster that is, almost to the player, the one that just won the Cup.
