Montreal Opens in Toronto and Hosts the Champions Six Days Later

Montreal’s first four weeks of the 2026-27 season contain the two games the league most wanted on television and one it built a stadium plan around. None of them is a soft landing.

The Canadiens open on Sept. 29 in Toronto, the front half of Sportsnet’s all-Canadian doubleheader on the earliest opening night since 1993-94. Vancouver at Edmonton follows it. Six days later, on Oct. 6, Montreal’s home opener brings in Carolina, which will have raised its Stanley Cup banner the week before.

The opener is a scheduling decision, not a coincidence

Opening night runs as a five-game slate. ESPN takes a tripleheader in the United States: Carolina hosting Florida at 5 p.m. ET with the banner ceremony attached, the Rangers at Boston at 8 p.m. ET, and Chicago at Vegas at 10:30 p.m. ET. Sportsnet takes the two Canadian games.

Putting Montreal in Toronto on night one is the least surprising decision on the sheet. It is also a genuine test of where both clubs are. Montreal went 48-24-10 last season and reached the Eastern Conference Final. Toronto went 32-36-14, finished last in the Atlantic and ended a nine-year playoff run. The two clubs enter the same building on the same night from opposite directions, which is exactly why it is scheduled that way.

Carolina comes to the Bell Centre with a banner already up

The Oct. 6 home opener is the harder assignment. Carolina beat Vegas in six games in June and went 16-3 through the postseason, and it did comparatively little to the roster afterward. Whatever Montreal learned about itself in the Eastern Conference Final, the club that ended the season holding the trophy is the second team it sees at home.

Both games sit inside a schedule that is longer than any the league has run since 1993-94. Every team plays 84 games (42 at home, 42 on the road) across 1,344 games in 194 days. The two additional games each club plays are divisional, so the Atlantic gets tighter rather than wider.

The outdoor game lands on Oct. 25

Three weeks into the season, Montreal goes outdoors. Winnipeg hosts the Canadiens in the Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic on Sunday, Oct. 25, at Princess Auto Stadium, the first of the league’s three outdoor dates, ahead of the Winter Classic at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Dec. 31 and the Stadium Series at AT&T Stadium on Feb. 20.

An outdoor game in Winnipeg in late October is a different proposition than one in Dallas in February, and it comes at a point in the calendar when neither club has settled into anything. That is worth remembering before reading much into the result.

Montreal will have played three of the more consequential games on its schedule before Halloween. Two of them are on the road, and the one that is not brings in the reigning champion.

Odds and market references describe the situation at the time of writing. You must meet the legal gambling age in your province or territory. See responsible gambling.