It’s very difficult to three-peat as champion in any major professional sport, but especially in the modern era of the NHL. The league has not seen any team win at least three consecutive Stanley Cups since the New York Islanders won four straight from 1980 to 1983; since the salary cap was implemented in 2005, only three teams have even repeated as champions.
Thus, the two-time reigning champion Florida Panthers will look to become the first three-peat Stanley Cup winners of the salary cap era and sportsbooks, at least initially, liked their odds to do so, as they were co-favorites (+700) to win the 2026 title immediately following their 2025 win, per ESPN BET odds.
Those odds only improved over the summer after the Panthers locked in team-friendly extensions with Aaron Ekblad, Brad Marchand and Sam Bennett, making them +600 solo favorites approaching the end of September. Even offseason groin surgery for superstar Matthew Tkachuk couldn’t stop Florida’s momentum, as ESPN BET senior director Adrian Horton noted a “large influx of Panthers action,” with bettors understanding that the injury will not keep him out the entire season.
Then it got worse: On Sept. 25, captain Aleksander Barkov went down with a knee injury that required surgery and almost certainly rules him out for the entire regular season, possibly longer. Several books immediately lengthened Florida’s Stanley Cup odds, with ESPN BET raising them to +1000, sixth on the odds board.
And yet, the action backing the Panthers remains robust. ESPN BET reports its highest share of Stanley Cup bets (17.1%) and handle (21.4%) backing the Cats, with BetMGM reporting 13.8% of handle, second-best in the market.
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ESPN BET has since shortened Florida back to +900 (tied for second-best) and some shops, like Caesars Sportsbook, never dethroned the team from favorite status at all. The sportsbook’s head of hockey, Karry Shreeve, said that while his oddsmaking team took Barkov’s injury into effect for markets like President’s Trophy winner and team point total, he believes that they’re always a threat to win the Stanley Cup if they can just get to the playoffs.
“They’re really tricky. For us, it’s definitely dependent on what the market is. So those injuries, in my opinion right now, really just affect the regular season and everything that comes with that,” Shreeve told ESPN. “But we’re not ready to drop them in price significantly, at least for the Stanley Cup, just because I’m not convinced who’s going to fill their spot [in the playoffs].”
“Last season they faced a full gauntlet in the playoffs, eliminating tough opponents in Tampa, Toronto, Carolina, and Edmonton on their way to a second title,” Horton said over email. “Even if they struggle during the regular season, they’ve proved over the last two years that they need to be considered a favorite when gearing up for the postseason, especially if Barkov can return.”
See more: Preseason power rankings | Stanley Cup odds | Fantasy hockey draft guide
Crowded field of Stanley Cup challengers
Of course, the Panthers are far from the only team vying for the Stanley Cup and there is a bevy of contenders at the top, with seven teams showing odds of +1000 or shorter at ESPN BET.
The logjam of favorites sporting +800 odds include the Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche and Edmonton Oilers, the Cup runners-up two years running. Just beyond that lie the Dallas Stars, Vegas Golden Knights and Panthers at +900, with the Tampa Bay Lightning coming in at +1000.
The odds fluctuate greatly from book to book, with BetMGM, for one, installing Vegas as a favorite alongside Edmonton, while DraftKings has Carolina as the solo favorite. ESPN BET priced the Hurricanes competitively, seeing this as potentially the year its talented core finally breaks through.
“Carolina is one of the most consistently dominant teams we have seen in recent years, having recouped some talent over the summer as they look to make another deep run,” said Horton. “Patrons will likely have their postseason struggles in mind, but it took the Panthers at full steam to eliminate them. We fully expect Carolina to be back battling in the playoffs.”
The Canes have not attracted such significant public attention, with BetMGM ranking them fifth (6.5%) and ESPN BET ranking them seventh (5.7%) in Stanley Cup bet share. Instead, bettors are largely backing the Avalanche and Golden Knights in the favorites tier.
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But outside of the top contenders, American bettors are largely turning their attention north of the border. The Toronto Maple Leafs have been unequivocally one of the most-bet teams for the Stanley Cup across the sportsbook marketplace, taking a leading 10.6% of tickets and 15.0% of handle at BetMGM, who lowered them to +1600 from +2000 at open. They aren’t the only Canadian team attracting public attention.
“After a late season surge last year there is also betting interest in the Canadiens,” BetMGM senior trader Matthew Rasp said in a release. “We expect Montreal to take another step forward and for liability to grow on the team.”
To that end, Toronto has garnered the most bets (17.4%) to win the Eastern Conference, while Montreal has gotten the most handle (20.1%) in the market at the sportsbook.
In general, though, bookmakers aren’t sweating Canada’s Stanley Cup drought finally ending after 33 years, with the exception of possibly Edmonton getting it done. Shreeve said he is “comfortable” with the price he is offering on the Leafs despite the action, while DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello is expecting the winner to come from the cluster of favorites.
“The way I look at it, there’s no real clear-cut, short favorite,” Avello told ESPN. “This year, it’s more wide open at the top, and then you have a whole second tier of teams that are in that 20-to-40 range. There’s another 10 teams there. Could the Stanley Cup winner come from there? Absolutely. But the top tier has eight teams that we believe will contend for the title.”
The last preseason Stanley Cup favorite to win the title was the Avalanche (+600) in 2022.
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Can money buy his Hart?
The 2025-26 NHL season will mark the 100th awarding of the Hart Memorial Trophy to the league’s most valuable player, so it could be fitting that a multi-time winner of the award who is well on his way to becoming an all-time great comes into the campaign as a huge favorite.
Oiler captain Connor McDavid is +200 at ESPN BET, holding a relatively large lead over Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon (+475) and Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov (+650), former Hart winners themselves.
While McDavid’s preseason odds aren’t unprecedented — he was actually shorter to open the previous two seasons — they are significant given the hockey world is watching him on and off the ice. On the eve of Opening Night, McDavid signed a two-year, $25 million extension to stay with the Oilers beyond this season, following much free agency speculation after the team’s second straight Cup Final defeat.
“With McDavid, it just helps that he’s inherently already going to be the favorite for a lot of these awards,” Shreeve said. “So just because of who he is already … we don’t have to make him even more of a favorite.”
Speaking of new contracts, Minnesota Wild superstar Kirill Kaprizov signed a record-setting eight-year, $136 million deal at the end of September, which may have generated some buzz around him in the Hart betting markets. The winger has garnered the most wagers at ESPN BET and BetMGM, also attracting the most handle at the former (17.6%). He shows +1200 odds at ESPN BET, fifth on the board.
Bettors are also buying into the idea that a goalie could repeat for the Hart Trophy after Winnipeg Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck took home the hardware last season. Bookmakers at BetMGM, DraftKings and ESPN BET all report liabilities on goalies like Hellebuyck (+3000), Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy (100-1) and the New York Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin (100-1).
Shreeve sees that happening as “unlikely” and the numbers certainly back him up there: Out of the Hart’s 99 awardings, only nine have gone to goalies and just once in repeat years — both to Dominik Hasek in 1997 and 1998.
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Kirill Kaprizov’s top plays from last season
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Calder betting: Get to know the name Ivan Demidov
The betting market for the Calder Memorial Trophy, awarded to the league’s rookie of the year, can be a strange one.
Shreeve notes that the overall handle for Calder winner is relatively small compared to other NHL future markets, likely owing to unfamiliarity with the names in question. “We just don’t know as much about these guys as we would in the NBA or NFL because we don’t grow up with these guys,” he said. “A lot of them are European, a lot of them just playing in leagues we’re not familiar with.”
Thus, the markets often end up with a situation where one flashy name rises above the rest to be the preseason favorite. Sometimes it results in the favorite going the distance — such as Connor Bedard (-135) in 2023-24 and Auston Matthews (-130) in 2016-17 — and sometimes it doesn’t, for mitigating circumstances or otherwise, such as when McDavid came into the 2015-16 season at +130, but lost the award to Artemi Panarin (+2200) after sustaining an injury.
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This year, the name is Ivan Demidov of the Canadiens, who is an overwhelming +165 favorite at ESPN BET; the next closest players — Oilers forward Isaac Howard, San Jose Sharks forward Michael Misa and Wild defenseman Zeev Buium– are in a three-way tie for second at +1200.
Because of the lack of name recognition, bookmakers chalk up Demidov’s status as the favorite to bettor activity rather than on expert consensus. At ESPN BET, Demidov holds a whopping 73.1% of the handle to win the award, and he also has the most tickets and money at BetMGM.
“Demidov is an interesting case as he made a splash at the end of last season and is still eligible for the Calder this year,” said Horton. “The media frenzy around his debut is a leading factor in the early opinion of him to be a standout favorite.”
The only other name garnering any sort of notable attention is Blackhawks defenseman Sam Rinzel (+2500), who Avello notes has become a liability at DraftKings due to his long odds.
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