A Record 84-Game Regular Season
The NHL released its complete 2026-27 regular-season schedule on Thursday, July 16, mapping the league's first 84-game campaign since 1993-94. All 32 clubs will play the expanded slate under the latest collective bargaining agreement, which adds two divisional matchups per team and brings the total to 1,344 games. The regular season runs from September 29, 2026, through April 10, 2027. The salary cap climbs to $104 million for 2026-27, a jump of $8.5 million from last season's $95.5 million ceiling — providing clubs with more room to retain key players or add free-agent depth.
Opening Night: Champions Raise a Second Banner in Raleigh
The season opens September 29 with a five-game slate. The marquee matchup sends the Florida Panthers to Lenovo Center in Raleigh, where the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes raise their second title banner before a 5 p.m. ET puck drop on ESPN. Carolina won the Cup for the second time in franchise history last spring and opens as the team every other club must beat across the league's longest schedule in more than 30 years.
The rest of the opening-night card: Montreal Canadiens at Toronto Maple Leafs (7 p.m. ET, Sportsnet), New York Rangers at Boston Bruins (8 p.m. ET, ESPN), and Vancouver Canucks at Edmonton Oilers (10 p.m. ET, Sportsnet). The five-game evening mirrors the scale of ambition behind the extended season.
Winter Classic, Heritage Classic and the Road to January
On October 25, the Jets host the Montreal Canadiens outdoors at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg in the Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic — one of hockey's enduring rivalries taken outside under the Manitoba sky.
New Year's Eve brings the 2027 Discover NHL Winter Classic to Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where the Utah Mammoth — now in their third NHL season — host the Colorado Avalanche in front of a projected crowd of 54,000. The game tips off at 4 p.m. MT, with New Year's Eve festivities planned downtown at the Delta Center afterward. When Utah takes the ice, the Mammoth become the final franchise in the league to host a regular-season outdoor game, completing the circuit across all 32 clubs.
All-Star Weekend Goes International With Five National Teams
The most structurally significant change in the 2026-27 calendar comes at the 2027 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend on February 5-6 at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York. The NHL and NHLPA jointly unveiled a new format in June: five national squads — Canada, Finland, Sweden, the United States, and a "World" team composed of players from all other countries — compete in a three-on-three round-robin tournament. Each team fields 11 players and plays four games of five minutes each. The winning nation splits a $2 million prize pool.
Sweden's inclusion as a full national team raises the mid-season stakes for Scandinavian followers. Detroit Red Wings winger Viktor Arvidsson, the Skellefteå native who signed a two-year, $5 million AAV contract in July, is among the strongest candidates to wear the Tre Kronor sweater in Elmont. Defenseman Rasmus Andersson, who re-signed with the Vegas Golden Knights on a seven-year, $8.5 million AAV extension, is another prominent Swedish name likely in contention. The format delivers a compressed international tournament without the IIHF calendar, giving fans from Nordic and European markets a mid-winter rallying point.
The full 2026-27 schedule is available at NHL.com. Training camps open in mid-September, and the expanded regular season concludes April 10 before the playoff bracket takes shape the following week.