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After a marathon 82-game regular season, just 16 teams remain as the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs officially begins this weekend. There will be a new champion this year as the two-time defending champions Florida Panthers failed to qualify for the postseason, so who will make it through the gauntlet that is the NHL postseason and hoist the Stanley Cup?

Interested in NHL betting? Here, we take a look at the betting odds for all eight first-round series as well as futures betting odds for all 16 playoff teams to win the Stanley Cup, with all odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook. Learn more about how to read betting odds here. 

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First round series winner odds

The stage is set for eight first-round playoff series, with no shortage of intriguing matchups on tap in both the Eastern and Western Conferences. Here's a quick look at the odds for each first-round series winner.

Eastern Conference matchups

Western Conference matchups

Sportsbooks also offer different prop bets for series, such as how many games the series will last. Additionally, there are player prop bets available for each series as well, including which player will score the most goals in that specific series. You can learn more about prop betting here. 

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Stanley Cup futures odds

There's nothing quite like the Stanley Cup Playoffs, as we see top-end contenders fall early on in the process and surprise teams make surges towards Cup contention. But as things currently stand, per the latest DraftKings odds, the sportsbook believes there are three premier contenders before a tight grouping of six more squads -- and then there's everyone else.

  • Colorado Avalanche, +300
  • Carolina Hurricanes, +475
  • Tampa Bay Lightning, +500
  • Vegas Golden Knights, +1000
  • Dallas Stars, +1000
  • Edmonton Oilers, +1300
  • Ottawa Senators, +1300
  • Buffalo Sabres, +1400
  • Minnesota Wild, +1800
  • Pittsburgh Penguins, +2500
  • Montreal Canadiens, +3500
  • Utah Mammoth, +3500
  • Boston Bruins, +5500
  • Los Angeles Kings, +6000
  • Philadelphia Flyers, +7000
  • Anaheim Ducks, +8000

The favorites: Avalanche +300

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Avs enter the postseason as the clear favorite to hoist Lord Stanley's Cup. Colorado had an excellent regular season that saw the team win the Presidents' Trophy for having the most points (121) out of all 32 teams, and the Avalanche rank first in both goals scored (302) while also allowing the fewest goals in the league by a wide margin (203, 23 fewer than second place). 

The star duo of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar is hard to top, and goaltender Scott Wedgewood likely will win the Vezina Trophy after leading the league in goals allowed per game. 

Colorado sure looks the part of a team that can win its second Cup in five seasons, but it will have to snap the Presidents' Trophy curse as no team has won that and the Stanley Cup since the 2012-13 Chicago Blackhawks. 

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Other contenders: Hurricanes +475, Lightning +500, Golden Knights +1000, Stars +1000

Along with the Avs, the Hurricanes and Lightning are the two other teams with futures odds under +1000 to win the Cup. Carolina continued to be solid this year, finishing with the top record in the Eastern Conference with 113 points. The Lightning won it all in 2020 and 2021 and are regularly in the thick of things come postseason time. Tampa's Nikita Kucherov ranked second in the NHL in points scored, and he can easily take a series over. 

Over in the Western Conference, sportsbook odds have the Golden Knights and Stars as Colorado's main competition in the Western Conference. The Golden Knights have been a perennial Cup contender since the franchise's inception in 2018, and their roster is loaded with veterans with postseason experience. The Stars also have the tougher first-round matchup of the two teams as Vegas faces Utah and is -190 to advance while Dallas contends with Minnesota in what many believe to be the best series of the first round. The Stars are -120 to advance past the first round.

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Intriguing longshot: Penguins +2500

The Penguins are back in the playoffs after a three-year drought as new head coach Dan Muse is pulling all the right strings. The team is solid all around, ranking well in goals scored and allowed. The Penguins have a ton of veteran experience worth mentioning, and the team got nice results from Sidney Crosby (74 points), Erik Karlsson (66 points), Bryan Rust (65 points) and Evgeni Malkin (61 points). Crosby missed 14 games this year while Malkin missed 26, and both averaged at least one point per contest this season.

If there's something else that really stands out, it's that Pittsburgh has been streaky this year. The Penguins had two separate six-game win streaks that played a big part in the team making the postseason, but they also had an eight-game losing streak back in December. 

A play on Pittsburgh is banking on the veteran experience of Crosby, Malkin and Karlsson to come through and for the team to catch fire like it did a few times this year. The Penguins also face a Flyers team they split the season series against, though the two losses came in overtime. Pittsburgh knows Philadelphia very well, and the Flyers rank in the bottom half of the league in goals scored.

Stanley Cup pick: Lightning +500

It feels like the Lightning are due for another postseason breakthrough after three straight first-round exits. Those early bounces came on the heels of three consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances, two of which the team won. 

This is a veteran squad with a ton of winning experience, and that really matters this time of year. Additionally, Tampa Bay has the league's longest-tenured coach in Jon Cooper, who has coached this squad to two titles and two other Cup appearances. 

The Lightning are as well balanced as any team in the field not named the Avalanche, ranking in the top five in both goals scored and goals allowed. Kucherov is a game wrecker while the supporting pieces around him are stellar, such as Jake Guentzel, Brandon Hagel and Darren Raddysh. Andrei Vasilevskiy has also been fantastic in goal with a 2.31 goals allowed mark and .911 save percentage, and he's a steady presence who played a big part in the Lightning winning their last two Cups in 2020 and 2021.

The Eastern Conference field is a bit more crowded on paper than out West, but it feels like the Lightning have the best mix of ceiling and floor on that side of the bracket. 

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Conn Smythe Trophy odds

Placing futures bets on the Stanley Cup Playoffs isn't reserved just for teams. The Conn Smythe Trophy goes to the most valuable player each and every postseason, with the winner of the award almost always playing in the Final and for the winning team. Nine of the last 10 Conn Smythe winners also won the Stanley Cup Final, with the lone exception over that timeframe being Edmonton's Connor McDavid when the Oilers lost to the Panthers two seasons ago. 

Here are the 14 players with Conn Smythe odds shorter than +4000 entering the postseason

Conn Smythe Trophy pick: Nikita Kucherov +1100

Given I picked Tampa Bay to win it all, it only makes sense to back Kucherov to win the Conn Smythe. The veteran Russian winger is a scoring machine, having led the NHL in goals and points three times, including 2023-24 and 2024-25. And while he didn't win the Conn Smythe during Tampa's last two title runs, Kucherov record at least 32 points in each of those postseasons, so it's not like he's a regular-season wonder. 

As far as longshots go, Rantanen at +3500 really stands out. Rantanen has shown up in the postseason the last few years, averaging more than a point per game each of the last four playoffs for two different franchises. He had 25 points during Colorado's Cup run in 2021-22 and had five different three-point games during his first playoff run with Dallas last year. If you like the Stars to get past a tough first-round matchup against the Wild, this is a good price for Rantanen. 

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