A new NHL season kicks off tonight with some historic rivalries and the reigning Stanley Cup champions celebrating their title.<\/p>\n
The Carolina Hurricanes<\/a> will raise their championship banner before taking on a Florida Panthers<\/a> side reinvigorated by the return of captain Aleksander Barkov<\/a>.<\/p>\n Four Canadian teams are also in action, starting with No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna<\/a> and the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> hosting a Montreal Canadiens<\/a> team that made it to the Eastern Conference final last season.<\/p>\n The Edmonton Oilers<\/a> also begin their first season under head coach Mike Babcock, hosting the rebuilding Vancouver Canucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Opening night play also includes an original six matchup between the Bruins and the New York Rangers<\/a> in Boston, and a tilt between the Chicago Blackhawks<\/a> and the Golden Knights in Vegas.<\/p>\n The Calgary Flames<\/a> kick off their season Thursday at home against the Seattle Kraken<\/a>, the Winnipeg Jets<\/a> get started Friday when they host the Bruins, and the Ottawa Senators<\/a> play their first game Saturday when they visit the Leafs in Toronto.<\/p>\n This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 29, 2026.<\/p>\n The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new NHL season kicks off tonight with some historic rivalries and the reigning Stanley Cup champions celebrating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-914208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}