ESPN's Way-Too-Early 2026-27 Rankings: Carolina First, Vancouver Last
NHL power rankings for 2026-27 feature the Carolina Hurricanes first and the Vancouver Canucks last, updated after recent offseason transactions.
Quick answers
Who ranked first and last in ESPN's early 2026-27 NHL rankings?
ESPN's June panel placed the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes first and the Vancouver Canucks 32nd. Colorado ranked second, Dallas third, Montreal fourth and Buffalo fifth, while Chicago and Calgary joined Vancouver near the bottom.
Why should ESPN's early NHL power rankings be treated as a baseline?
The panel voted before the NHL draft and July free agency. Several roster questions identified in the write-ups changed afterward, so the list captures informed pre-offseason expectations rather than a final assessment of the teams entering training camp.
The first real 1-32 of the 2026-27 cycle landed on June 14, when ESPN published its way-too-early power rankings. The method is a straight vote: a panel of ESPN hockey commentators, analysts, reporters and editors each submits a 1-32 poll based on how they see next season playing out. No formula, no analytics model, just the collective read of a newsroom two months before training camp.
The panel put the Carolina Hurricanes first, which is the least surprising call on the board given they had just won the Stanley Cup. Colorado came second, Dallas third, Montreal fourth and Buffalo fifth. Vegas, the team Carolina beat, landed sixth. Tampa Bay took seventh, Minnesota eighth, Florida ninth and Boston closed the top ten.
The movement tells the real story
A single-season snapshot is only interesting next to what came before it, and ESPN’s biggest movers were dramatic. The Florida Panthers climbed from 26th in the panel’s previous edition to ninth, almost entirely on the strength of Aleksander Barkov returning. Florida lost its captain for the entire 2025-26 season and worked through what ESPN described as an endless list of injuries. Getting Barkov back, with more than $15 million in cap space to spend, was enough to move the Panthers 17 spots without a single transaction being made.
Toronto moved the other direction on the calendar but the right direction in the standings, up from 28th to 24th on the back of a new general manager and a draft lottery result that landed them Gavin McKenna.
The fallers were quieter and more structural. Columbus slid from 14th to 20th as free agency departures piled up, and Nashville dropped from 20th to 26th with a general manager transition underway. Neither team collapsed. Both simply lost the benefit of the doubt.
At the bottom, the panel had Vancouver 32nd, Chicago 31st, Calgary 30th and the New York Rangers 29th. Calgary’s placement is the one worth reading as a plan rather than an indictment. ESPN noted the Flames are leaning into a rebuild after moving key veterans, and have stockpiled two first-round picks in each of the next three drafts plus eight total selections in the first three rounds of the most recent one.
What the poll could not know
The timing matters more than usual here. ESPN’s panel voted before the June 26-27 draft and before free agency opened on July 1. Several of the storylines the write-ups flagged as open questions have since been answered, and not always in the direction the ranking implied.
Carolina’s entry noted Frederik Andersen as a pending unrestricted free agent. He signed in Edmonton. Tampa Bay’s entry flagged Darren Raddysh, coming off 22 goals and 70 points at age 30, as a re-signing decision. He left for Toronto on a multi-year sign-and-trade. Florida’s entry identified a goaltending overhaul with both Sergei Bobrovsky and Daniil Tarasov unrestricted; Bobrovsky ended up in Toronto.
Dallas at third rested on resolving Jason Robertson, a 26-year-old restricted free agent coming off 45 goals and 96 points. That negotiation was still open in early July, with the Associated Press reporting the deal could exceed $100 million.
How to use it in August
Read the June poll as a baseline rather than a verdict. It captures how informed people rated 32 rosters before the two events that reshape rosters most. Every ranking published since then, including the betting markets, is effectively an argument about which of those June assumptions survived July. Reading the current NHL betting odds next to this list is the most direct way to see which teams the market has already repriced.
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.