NHL

NHL and other hockey related posts.

Rating the 2026 NHL Playoff Series

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It took until the final night of the season, but the entire NHL playoff bracket is set. The NHL’s backwards format is showing cracks again this year as the second and third best teams (by points) in the West and the seventh and eighth best teams in the East will face off in their respective first round series. 

The NHL also narrowly avoided having a higher seeded team enter their first round series with fewer points than the team they were hosting. A Vegas loss on Wednesday and a Utah win on Thursday would have meant the Mammoth finished with 94 points while the Oilers and Vegas would have finished with 93 points (with Edmonton winning the division thanks to their regulation wins). Seems like a great format! 

Setting aside issues with how the NHL opts to seed playoff teams, the first round of the NHL playoffs is always appointment viewing and this year features several matchups that will make the best weeks of the NHL season that much juicer. Thus, there is no better way to celebrate the opening of the postseason than to rate the raft of first round series from worst to best. Each series is rated on a scale of one to five pucks. 

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The NHL Draft Is Coming Back To Buffalo, Where Will it be Held?

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The Sabres will once again host the NHL draft, though it’s going to look quite a bit different than it did the last time the event rolled through town. 

Buffalo Sabres make their pick at the 2024 NHL Draft.

Despite some rumblings that last year’s decentralized format wasn’t going to last long, teams voted to keep the draft decentralized for at least one more year. That means the version of the draft coming through Buffalo will be a much different affair than we saw in 2016. There won’t be rows of team tables packed with scouts and executives filling the arena floor. In fact, the event may not even be held at KeyBank Center.

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Ranking the 2026 Olympic Hockey Jerseys

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The Olympics are right around the corner and one of the hallmarks of international tournaments are the uniforms each country’s team will sport during the event. The Olympics have been a launchpad for new uniform designs for decades now. Nike launched the Swift uniforms in 2006 – a new-age uniform design that featured new fabrics and vertical striping patterns – and Nike has continued to debut for new runs of international team jerseys at the Games. That has made the debut of new Olympic uniforms an exciting event as many countries will continue to use the uniforms for several years to follow. Although not every set has been a winner. 

This year will be no different as Nike has produced a new fleet of uniforms for the 12 countries participating in this year’s Olympic Games. Now that all of the uniforms for 2026 have been released (or leaked), and with games a month away, what better time than now to rank them? We’ll start from the bottom and work our way up. 

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Winning Picks Abound With the Lululemon x Fanatics NHL Collection

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Last month, I got a look at some of the newest items in Lululemon’s NHL apparel line. The Lululemon and NHL collaboration, in partnership with Fanatics has dropped a range of apparel for all 32 NHL teams in both men’s and women’s styles. 

Both myself and Mrs. 2ITB picked up a few items, including the Everywhere Belt Bag, the College Cobalt Soft Jersey Half Zip Pullover, the Vapor License to Train Hoodie, the Heathered Core Ultralight Hoodie and the Heathered Core Ultra Light Long Scuba Oversized Half Zip. (Would it kill Lululemon to shorten the names of some of these items?) We’ve had the pleasure of wearing them for a couple of weeks and here are the pros and cons of the NHL x Lululemon line. 

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Roster Building Lessons from Florida’s Second Cup Win

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The Florida Panthers are back-to-back Stanley Cup Champions and have played in the Finals for each of the last three years. They have become the NHL’s gold standard in practically every aspect of their operations and dismantled the Eastern Conference before dispatching the Edmonton Oilers for the second-straight season. 

But how did they get here and what can be learned about this three-year run of dominance? 

Drafting and developing is regularly referenced as the clearest path to success for rebuilding NHL teams. If done right, constructing a strong pipeline of talent at key positions (read: center and defense) through the draft will set up a team for long term success. Florida’s success runs counter to that a bit, as only four players who appeared in the playoffs this year were drafted by the Panthers. One of whom, Mackie Samoskevich, only appeared in four games. Of course, two of the players who the Panthers drafted are Alexsander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad, picked second and first respectively in their drafts, but 19 of the 24 players rostered in the playoffs were acquired via free agency or trades. 

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The Definitive Fictional Hockey Roster

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Many years ago I put together a roster of players exclusively from hockey movies. This fictional team was pretty well rounded if I do say so myself. It also focused solely on movies and in the interim, Shoresy has become a smash hit, featuring a host of characters deserving of consideration for this exercise. 

The general premise remains the same: create the best fictional hockey roster from movies and TV shows. No true stories, no documentaries, just fictional shows. The team is meant to be well-rounded as well, not an all star team made up of the top scorer in every show or movie. 

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The Instigator Podcast – Quick Hit Trade Deadline Recap

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Josh Norris was the big addition for the Sabres on deadline day and Kevyn Adams did a fair bit of work moving out Dylan Cozens and Henri Jokiharju and extending Jason Zucker. This episode is a quick rundown of Friday’s work by Adams, offering a brief breakdown of the Norris acquisition. In addition, this episode takes a look at a busy deadline around the league, highlighting the most notable deals made at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline.

You can find The Instigator Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts:

iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
iHeartRadio
TuneIn
Google Play

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4 Nations Notes

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There’s bound to be some whiplash switching from the 4 Nations Face Off back to regular season NHL action. The in-season tournament exceeded any and all expectations fans, media and probably even the players had for it, and there is a newfound level of interest in hockey as a result. 

Big television viewership and a pair of thrilling games between the US and Canada made the event appointment viewing and served as an ideal reset for NHL participation in international play. There were a few additional thoughts I wanted to share looking back at the event that didn’t fit into the recap of the tournament that already ran on the blog. 

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Reflecting on the Wild Success of the 4 Nations Face Off

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I’m not sure if you gave Gary Bettman a genie and some wishes he could have come up with a better outcome for the 4 Nations Face Off. The midseason tournament was a smash hit for the NHL, thrusting the sport’s stars into the spotlight and bringing a level of attention to the league that hasn’t been seen in years. 

A week and a half of thrilling hockey was headlined by a pair of excellent matchups between the U.S. and Canada. It was an ideal result for the NHL as their brightest star scored the tournament clinching goal less than a week after a raucous, fight-filled affair on Saturday night in Montreal. The preliminary match drew a big TV audience in the States and Thursday’s championship nearly hit 10 million U.S. viewers, unheard of numbers for the NHL. Every player has commented about how special it was to play for their country in this format. At every turn, the 4 Nations Face Off was a win.

This isn’t the first time the NHL has enjoyed a bit of extra attention from an international event. Team USA’s run to the gold medal game in 2010 was a captivating story and you couldn’t turn on a daytime talk show without seeing TJ Oshie in 2014. The NHL wasn’t able to keep the positive momentum from those Olympic appearances rolling once games resumed, leaving a questionable track record when contrasted with the post 4 Nations glow. 

The big difference this time is that the league owned the tournament. The games were broadcast by the league’s broadcast partners (like NBC in ‘10 and ‘14) and the NHL organized and oversaw every aspect of the event. Social media is also a much different animal today than it was during either of those two events and the league’s star power has never been more impressive. There are certainly more factors playing to the NHL’s favor this time than at any point in the last three best-on-best tournaments NHL players have participated in. 

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The Instigator Podcast 13.22 – 4 Aces for the 4 Nations

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The 4 Nations Face Off has been a massive success for the NHL, headlined by an excellent USA vs. Canada matchup on Saturday night. We run through the preliminary round results, not just breaking down the fight-filled game between the US and Canada but the results for the Finns and Swedes as well. In addition to our discussion on the hugely positive reaction to the preliminary games, we also offer up a preview for Thursday’s rematch between the US and Canada for the 4 Nations championship. 

You can find The Instigator Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts:

iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
iHeartRadio
TuneIn
Google Play