The 2025-26 National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup Playoffs will begin on Saturday, March 18 with the Ottawa Senators and Carolina Hurricanes kicking it off at 3 PM. On the same day, the Dallas Stars will host the Minnesota Wild at 5:30 PM and later on in the day the Philadelphia Flyers will take a trip into Western Pennsylvania to play the Pittsburgh Penguins at 8 PM.

The first round of the playoffs will run until at least April 26 and potentially further depending on how many teams need up to the allotted seven games.

The Colorado Avalanche were able to secure this year’s President’s Trophy, meaning they had the most regular season points out of any team. A likely factor to their success was forward, Nathan MacKinnon, who won this season’s Rocket Richard Trophy which is awarded to the season’s top goal scorer, and goalie tandem Scott Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood, who won the league’s William M. Jennings Trophy for the goalie duo who let in the least amount of goals in that season.

A notable player whose team did not make the playoffs was Macklin Celebrini who plays for the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks have been a notably non-successful team for the past few seasons. Although they missed the playoffs again this year, it was by a much smaller margin as they almost made it to the second wild card spot. Celebrini has been a driving force for the team’s success and he has had a record breaking season. 

Celebrini had 115 points this season, which surpasses Joe Thornton’s 2006-07 total of 114, for the most points in a season in Shark’s franchise history. This also the most points a player has had in their sophomore season since Sidney Crosby. On top of all this, Celebrini is still a teenager at 19 years old.

Seven of the current playoff teams were in the bottom 16 last season, meaning that they all missed the playoffs. Some teams, such as the Montreal Canadiens and the Utah Mammoth, were only a few points off from playoff contention last season. 

Alternately, teams such as the Philadelphia Flyers and the Boston Bruins finished in the bottom five teams last season, but managed to hold top playoff spots this time around.

On the other hand, there are now seven teams from 2024-25’s playoffs whose season is already over. Most notably, back to back Stanley Cup Champions, the Florida Panthers, found themselves from being top dogs to team number 25 and missing the playoffs by a decent margin. 

Additionally, during this season, the Vancouver Canucks traded their captain, Quinn Hughes, to the Minnesota Wild. Consequently, the Canucks have fallen to just barely missing out on the playoffs with Hughes on their team last year, to being the worst team in the league this year and gaining only 58 points during the regular season whereas the next worse team gained 72.