{"id":849541,"date":"2026-09-16T07:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T07:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849541\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T07:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T07:56:09","slug":"stanley-cup-contenders-for-2026-27-season-according-to-nhl-coms-dan-rosen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/849541\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley Cup contenders for 2026-27 season, according to NHL.com\u2019s Dan Rosen"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. Montreal\u00a0Canadiens<\/p>\n

If it’s jarring to see the Canadiens as the favorite, not just one of a few favorites, to win the Stanley Cup, it shouldn’t be. Maybe they won’t enter the season as the top team in preseason polls, but all the boxes are checked for the Canadiens to win their first Stanley Cup championship since 1993. No team from Canada has won the Cup since.<\/p>\n

They’ve got playoff experience now, having learned the hard lessons from losing to the Washington Capitals in the first round in 2025 and to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final last season.<\/p>\n

Remember, they got to the conference final last season after winning back-to-back seven-game series against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Buffalo Sabres. Each Game 7 win was on the road. There’s a lot to gain from that.<\/p>\n

Montreal has a Selke Trophy<\/a> winner in Nick Suzuki<\/a>. It’s not a prerequisite to winning the Cup, but certainly having the best or one of the best two-way centers in the League goes a long way in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens have a 50-goal scorer in Cole Caufield<\/a>, 25. They have a Norris Trophy-caliber defenseman in Lane Hutson<\/a>, 22, Each are just entering their prime.<\/p>\n

Ivan Demidov<\/a> is one of the top young players in the League, the Russian forward coming off a strong rookie season. Juraj Slafkovsky<\/a> is delivering on the hype as one of game’s top power forwards.<\/p>\n

Jakub Dobes<\/a> has emerged as a true No. 1 goalie, now with playoff experience. That’s a big question answered for the Canadiens.<\/p>\n

They’ve got depth everywhere, with the ability to roll four forward lines and three defense pairs, and they have one of the NHL’s best coaches in Martin St. Louis, who signed a new contract<\/a> Monday.<\/p>\n

The next step is reaching the Stanley Cup Final. Montreal has everything it needs to go one further and win it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Montreal\u00a0Canadiens If it’s jarring to see the Canadiens as the favorite, not just one of a few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-849541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}