The NHL regular season gets underway Oct. 7 with a tripleheader of games on ESPN, and the hockey betting possibilities pick up steam quickly after that.
We at RotoWire.com were curious about which teams are most likely to lift the Stanley Cup. All sorts of folks make predictions, but we thought we'd use ChatGPT to simulate the entire 2025-26 NHL season 100 times to see how often each team would go to the playoffs and who would win the most Stanley Cups. Here's what happened:
2025-26 NHL Season Projections After 100 AI Simulations
| Team | Playoff Appearances | Stanley Cups |
| Vegas Golden Knights | 89 | 42 |
| Dallas Stars | 94 | 26 |
| Carolina Hurricanes | 91 | 20 |
| Tampa Bay Lightning | 96 | 5 |
| Edmonton Oilers | 89 | 3 |
| Florida Panthers | 95 | 2 |
| Winnipeg Jets | 79 | 2 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | 94 | 0 |
| New Jersey Devils | 93 | 0 |
| Boston Bruins | 90 | 0 |
| Colorado Avalanche | 84 | 0 |
| Philadelphia Flyers | 70 | 0 |
| Minnesota Wild | 56 | 0 |
| Los Angeles Kings | 55 | 0 |
| New York Islanders | 51 | 0 |
| New York Rangers | 50 | 0 |
| St. Louis Blues | 49 | 0 |
| Buffalo Sabres | 44 | 0 |
| Calgary Flames | 39 | 0 |
| Vancouver Canucks | 32 | 0 |
| Washington Capitals | 27 | 0 |
| Montreal Canadiens | 26 | 0 |
| Ottawa Senators | 24 | 0 |
| Seattle Kraken | 16 | 0 |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | 14 | 0 |
| Detroit Red Wings | 14 | 0 |
| Nashville Predators | 12 | 0 |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | 12 | 0 |
| Utah Mammoth | 8 | 0 |
| Chicago Blackhawks | 3 | 0 |
| San Jose Sharks | 2 | 0 |
| Anaheim Ducks | 2 | 0 |
Teams are sorted by number of Stanley Cups won after 100 simulated seasons, followed by the number of times that the team secured a playoff berth. These simulations do not necessarily line up with NHL odds going into the season. Anyone trying the same experiment likely would get different results; your mileage may vary depending on the query that's fed into the system.
Favorite For Stanley Cup 2025-26 Based On Computer Modeling
The Vegas Golden Knights have been one of the best franchises in the league since the day they started in 2017-18. That season, the expansion Golden Knights stunned the hockey world by winning eight of their first nine games in their debut season and they kept steamrolling all the way to the Stanley Cup final before losing to the Washington Capitals. In all, Vegas has made the playoffs in seven of its eight seasons and won the Stanley Cup in 2022-23.
The Knights have odds ranging from +800 to +1000 to win the 2026 Stanley Cup, with the best price at BetRivers Sportsbook. In our simulations, Vegas tops the list, winning it all 42 times over the course of 100 AI-projected seasons. They also made the playoffs 89% of the time, one of the highest totals on our board.
Other Top Stanley Cup Contenders
NHL championship odds are all over the place and the unpredictable nature of running 100 season-long simulations on a computer program reflects that. On Oct. 2, we surveyed Cup odds at seven different legal U.S. sports betting sites and none of them had the exact same odds at the top.
The Carolina Hurricanes are +750 favorites to win at Hard Rock Bet Sportsbook and at DraftKings, and co-favorites at a few other operators. The 'Canes came out third best in our simulations, winning the Stanley Cup 20 times and making the postseason as one of the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference 91 times.
The team that won the Cup the second-most frequently (26 times) after 100 projected seasons was the Dallas Stars, who have lost in the Western Conference final the past three years running. The team that made the playoffs most often (96 times) was the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Bolts have +1500 Stanley Cup odds, the best price we found five days before the season, at Caesars. In an interesting twist, they only won the Cup in five out of 100 AI simulations. That speaks to how difficult it is to even get out of the Atlantic Division in the playoffs – largely because Tampa Bay's archrival, the two-time defending Cup champion Florida Panthers, reside there.
But the Panthers only won it all in two out of 100 projected seasons, probably because two of their biggest stars are out injured. Captain Aleksander Barkov, a three-time Selke Award winner as the NHL's best defensive forward, has had surgery on a torn ACL and MCL and might miss the season. And Matthew Tkachuk (adductor injury) is out for an undetermined amount of time.
The Barkov news in particular shook up Florida's odds. The Panthers are still the +600 odds favorite at Caesars, but DraftKings and BetMGM had them at +1100 as of Oct. 2. Florida had been favored to three-peat just a couple of weeks earlier.
Whose NHL Playoff Frustration Will Continue?
The Toronto Maple Leafs went to the playoffs in 94 out of 100 simulated seasons but never won the Stanley Cup – and any Leafs fan will tell you that this makes total sense.
Toronto has two active players on our list of best NHL players without a Stanley Cup after going to the playoffs the past nine seasons, the league's longest current streak. The problem is, the Leafs have only won two playoff series in that span and never even reached a conference final. Again, the depth of the Atlantic is the culprit – the division has produced the East champion in each of the past seven years (the Panthers in the past three seasons, the Lightning for three straight campaigns before that and the Boston Bruins in 2018-19).
Customers using the FanDuel promo code can get -350 odds on the Leafs to make the playoffs again in 2025-26, and +1700 odds on the franchise finally winning its first Stanley Cup since 1967.
