Florida Opens as Stanley Cup Favourite While Carolina Raises the Banner
Stanley Cup odds for 2026-27 show Florida as favorites while Carolina, last year's champion, sits second on the futures board.
Carolina will raise a championship banner on September 29 before facing Florida on opening night, and by the time the puck drops the Panthers will be the shorter price to win the whole thing. That is not an insult to the Hurricanes. It is what happens when a team that reached three straight Finals gets healthy and then goes shopping.
BET99’s 2026-27 futures board, last moved on July 30, has Florida at +640, Carolina at +700 and Colorado at +750, with Edmonton at +900 and Vegas at +1000 filling out the top five. BetMGM sees it slightly differently, with the Avalanche second at +750 and the reigning champions third at +800. The disagreement is small, but it tells you the market considers these three teams effectively interchangeable and is splitting hairs over roster news rather than pedigree.
What Florida actually bought
The Panthers did the loudest thing anyone did this summer. On June 21 they acquired Brady Tkachuk from Ottawa, handing over the ninth and twenty-fifth picks in the 2026 draft, a second-rounder in 2027 and conditional first-round rights in 2029. Tkachuk put up 59 points in 60 games for the Senators and has two years left on his seven-year deal, which means Florida bought a 26-year-old power forward at a known cost and gets to play him alongside his brother.
Nine days later they solved the crease. Jacob Markstrom came from New Jersey for Evan Rodrigues, Jesper Boqvist and Ben Steeves, arriving with two years on his contract and a 23-19-1, 3.07 record that reads worse than the goaltender behind it. Sergei Bobrovsky, who won two Cups in Sunrise, signed a three-year, $7 million AAV deal in Toronto on July 1. Radko Gudas returned on a six-year contract, Lars Eller signed for one year, and Garnet Hathaway, Akira Schmid, Alexander Petrovic and Sam Lafferty filled in the depth.
Then there is the piece that costs nothing against the cap ledger. Aleksander Barkov missed the entire 2025-26 season after ACL and MCL surgery. He came back at the 2026 World Championship and helped Finland win gold. A healthy Barkov is the difference between the team that ran out of legs last spring and the one that won back-to-back.
Why the champions are underpriced
Jordan Staal scored six goals in six Final games and became, at 37 years and 277 days, the oldest Conn Smythe winner in league history. He was also the first player since 1956 to score in the first five games of a Final. That is the kind of run nobody projects forward, and the market has responded by treating Carolina’s title as a fluke of variance rather than the outcome of a roster that has been elite for the better part of a decade.
That reasoning is half right and half lazy. Staal will not repeat that. Carolina’s structure, forecheck and goaltending depth will. A defending champion at +700 in a league this compressed is not an obvious pass.
The number worth watching
Edmonton at +900 is the price that will move most between now and October. The Oilers added Frederik Andersen on a one-year, $2.8 million deal, which ESPN graded A-minus in its July 7 free agency roundup, and that is either the cheapest fix of the summer or a patch on the same wound. If Andersen looks like himself in the preseason, +900 disappears fast.
Odds cited reflect the boards as posted in late July 2026 and will have moved.
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. New to betting on the NHL? Start with our guide to hockey betting.