It’s been a long time since our last Tuesday Teasings column, and yes, the Seattle Seahawks were legit. Today, we’re here with another attempt at predicting the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs. We got three of the four series right in choosing the victors, and in the one series we didn’t pick correctly, it still went seven games as we suggested. Alas, here we are with the NHL’s “Frozen Four“: Carolina, Colorado, Montréal, and Vegas. There are mathematical favorites, and there are sentimental one, so on with the show!

Eastern Conference Finals

The Hurricanes were the second-best team, sabermetrically, in the conference this year, and they now face the surprising Canadiens, the last chance for Canada to claim its first Cup since 1993. Montréal was fifth in the East, mathematically, but the Habs took out the No. 1 team and the No. 3 team in the first two rounds, respectively, needing seven games and a Game 7 win on the road to win both matchups. Do they have a third upset in them, again needing to be achieved on the road? The odds are slim.

Carolina holds our three key edges here: overall sabermetric superiority (to the tune of 0.32 goals per game), regular-win advantage from the regular season (plus-5); and a plus-29 goal differential. Through in home ice, and it seems like the Hurricanes should emerge and reach the Cup Finals. But … yeah. Montréal doesn’t care about any of this, and the Canadiens won both their Game 7s in overtime. They’ve shown a pluckiness we cannot ignore, yet we stick with the logic/math here. Carolina in five.

Western Conference Finals

The Avalanche had the best regular season of any team in the entire NHL, sabermetically speaking—by far (0.41 goals per game better than the next-best team, Tampa Bay). Colorado has a 1.01-gpg advantage over the Golden Knights, too, as the NHL postseason format basically eliminated the second-, third-, and fourth-best teams in the conference, all of whom played in the same division with the Avs. The result? The Pacific Division’s champion was a weak sibling in the collective bunch of the West. Fact.

Vegas doesn’t care they were the only above-average team, mathematically, in the Pacific. It’s here now, in the Conference Finals, with a chance to go after another Cup title. However, the sabermetrics do care: in addition to the math-based goals-per-game edge, Colorado is plus-18 in regulation wins and plus-84 in goal differential. This is a huge mismatch on paper, but they play the games on ice, don’t they? The two teams did play three close games this year. However, the Avs are too strong. Colorado in five.

Conclusion

We expect an Avalanche-Hurricanes matchup in the Cup Finals, which would be a good one. All four teams left have won Lord Stanley’s prize before, so there will be no new winners this year: Montréal (many), Carolina (2006), Colorado (multiple), and Vegas (2023) are among the anointed already. Upsets always happen in hockey, and our hearts are with the Canadiens, in truth.