Cruising through the regular season and the playoffs with the most dominant run in the NHL since the late 1980s, the Carolina Hurricanes go into this season as the defending Stanley Cup champion everyone else is looking to knock off.
Those contenders and the rest of the league’s 32 teams will each get two extra games before the playoffs begin in April in the first expansion of the regular season in more than three decades. They will combine to play 1,344 games — the most in history — before 16 get the chance pursue hockey’s hallowed Cup. Before torn ligaments in Barkov’s right knee and a series of other high-profile injuries derailed the Panthers last season and caused them to miss the playoffs, they hoisted the Stanley Cup back to back in 2024 and ’25 as part of a streak of three trips to the final. The best player in the world , Connor McDavid, has now played 11 NHL seasons without winning the Cup, including a gut-wrenching Game 7 loss in the 2024 final against Florida and a six-game Final loss to the Panthers the following year.
“You’re trying to make your team better every single day. And then at the end of the day, you’ll see where you stack up and if you can play your best hockey at the most important time of the year. “We don’t think too much ahead. We only live in the moment, try to live in a moment. And that’s what it is. Of course we added unreal players, we added real leaders to our team and we’re really excited about that. “It’s not to say that you go every single day of the regular season and wake up thinking, ‘Oh, it’s Cup or bust. But I think you’re aware of it. You know where your team’s at. Everybody knows it.”
“It kind of gives you something to chase after,” Montreal’s 51-goal scorer Cole Caufield said. “You’re just trying to build momentum,” Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said. “Of course that’s our dream, that’s our goal, but for us it’s always been a day at a time,” Barkov said. “Pressure is a privilege, and it has to be embraced,” Landeskog said.
