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We witnessed the full spectrum of Hockey quality in the first-round this year. From DAL/MIN to EDM/ANA, TB/MTL to PIT/PHI, every kind of Hockey was available, through multiple streaming services, just a click away. And somehow through all of this, only one series will end in its seventh game (the TB / MTL finale happens tomorrow). Colorado and Carolina, somewhat unsurprisingly, swept their respective series and head into the second round of the 2026 NHL playoffs as the clear Cup favorites from each Conference. America’s Teams (the Minnesota Wild and Buffalo Sabres) are moving on to the second round for the first time in 11 and 19 respective years, Vegas continues to annoy us with their perseverance, and I sort of just feel bad for the Oilers. The second round will feature multiple heavy underdogs (PHI, MIN), young messy teams that weren’t supposed to be here (ANA, PHI, BUF), and a team that we don’t know yet because I’m writing this on short notice because we’re overlapping the rounds for some reason.

If I was more inclined to clickbait or we could incorporate flashy thumbnails and had a YouTube channel with tons of subscribers, you might see “EMERGENCY PREVIEW” in big red letters somewhere amongst all that. Luke and I found out the second round was starting today maybe like 10 hours ago (probably that’s on us, but still)? Our process is not set up to easily run the playoff simulation while any given round is still ongoing. That said: we only want what’s best for our lovely readers and subscribers, so we made it work. Don’t you love us? I do. All joking aside, we’re going to be releasing our previews in this article one-by-one, roughly, while everything gets sorted out with the strange schedule. I don’t want to complain here (ok, obviously I do), but overlapping playoff rounds is a really good way to collapse storylines, confuse fans, and make things way more complicated than they should be. Not trying to overstep my influence, but if the league needed to ensure a Saturday night primetime game, maybe they should’ve started the first round a few days later? Like we’ve been saying. For three years. Just throwing this out there. Ok, rant over.

CAR / PHI is below for the time being. We’ll have COL / MIN and VGK / ANA up tomorrow morning. Boy is this second round going to be weird? Let’s get weird. I might even update the above section once I get a better vibe for what the second round will be like. Probably not. But I might.

Let’s recap:

Eastern Conference

Carolina Hurricanes (M1)     vs.     Philadelphia Flyers (M3)

86.9%                         13.1%

People are just bored of the Hurricanes at this point. I’m not, but people are. Throughout this past season, it felt like we as the collective general NHL-observer (I’m talking about all of us who are writing and reading this) just kind of stopped talking about the Canes during the regular season. Maybe the Avalanche overshadowed them, or the drama in the Metro was more interesting than their inevitable 113 standings points. Regardless, I was somewhat taken aback with our visualizations for their roster in our round 1 preview, but I shouldn’t have been. With the Senators drawing the short straw for their first-round opponent, they put up about as good a fight as you might expect from a team that didn’t win a game. Surprisingly, the Hurricanes didn’t actually lead in any of the standard on-ice EV metrics after a regular season of leading in all of them. There isn’t another team coming out of the East as strong as the Canes, and their roster here shows it quite clearly. That said, Frederik Andersen has a glaring amount of orange among the sea of blue in the roster above. We’ve discussed this at length in prior playoff years, but our models do not think highly of goalies over the age of 35, even if they still perform well sometimes (Fleury, Smith, Bobrovsky, Andersen, Anderson). Carolina’s choice of going with the veteran paid off. With 9.7 Goals Saved Above Expected (behind only Ullmark’s 10.05), Andersen was one of the main reasons the Canes were able to sweep in the first round. The model might not like him, but he clearly doesn’t care what any model thinks. I’m getting tired of writing this, but this Hurricanes team is scary.

The Philadelphia Flyers weren’t even supposed to be here today. Yet the little team that could from Pennsylvania defeated actual legends with none of their own. The Battle of Pennsylvania represented, I think, what the state encompasses: the bizarre. Philadelphia finished the first round with the lowest EV CF% and 5^th lowest xGF% among teams in the first round, only one player with more than four points (Rasmus Ristolainen), and the second highest short-handed CF/60. Entering the first round as relatively heavy underdogs (38% chance), the real story for Philly was their goaltending. Dan Vladar (their only starter) saved 8.5 goals above expected while facing the most Fenwick and xG at even-strength among all goalies in the first round. The Flyers are a legitimately fun and messy team that drew the long straw with their first-round opponent, even if the Penguins made things interesting towards the end. Their second-round opponent, however, is a different kind of beast. With a surprising amount of depth despite little “star” power (I’m biting my tongue re: Foerster and Cates), Philadelphia needs to harness all their other power as a city and get bizarre. I’m talking Gritty freezing actual Hurricanes in the stands like The Day After Tomorrow. You know that movie where Jake Gyllenhal plays a High School kid while looking 27 and then Dennis Quaid comes and saves him? We need Dennis Quaid to save the Flyers and freeze the Hurricanes. Pretty sure the movie happens out there on the east coast somewhere.

[BUF / ? ]

Western Conference

[COL / MIN]

[VGK / ANA]

More to come…