Gentille Leads NHL Staff Picks as Playoff Nhl 2026 Starts
Playoff nhl 2026 opened with The Athletic polling its NHL staff on first-round winners, conference picks, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the Stanley Cup, the most overrated team and a dark horse. The exercise put the bracket under a microscope before a puck was dropped, with several matchups framed as tight enough to split even strong evaluators.
Sean Gentille, James Mirtle, Mark Lazerus and Shayna Goldman then weighed in on the board, and the discussion quickly settled on the first round as the place where the path gets messy. Mirtle said eight of the NHL’s top nine teams are playing one another in Round 1, while Goldman said the Wild and Stars should face each other in Round 2 at the earliest under a different bracket format.
Stars, Wild and a bracket squeeze
Lazerus leaned toward Dallas in the Wild-Stars series because of forward depth, goaltending and experience. He also pointed to the bracket itself, saying, "The Wild tied the NHL record for the fewest regulation wins in a 100-point-plus season." He added, "And there’s no three-on-three or shootouts in the playoffs."
Goldman’s answer to that same matchup was sharper. "If anyone says the playoff format is fine, show them this matchup," she said. The point was not subtle: the opening round is forcing strong teams into a high-risk series before the field has even thinned.
Penguins and Flyers pressure
The Penguins-Flyers series carried a different kind of edge. Lazerus said the Penguins had already been in postseason mode for weeks because they had to "fight and scratch and claw just to get into the playoffs," and he did not think the Flyers were all that good.
Goldman still picked Pittsburgh, but she gave Philadelphia a live underdog case. "The Flyers have Cinderella Story written all over them," she said. Mirtle backed that up with on-ice detail, citing the Flyers’ underrated defensive play, general stinginess all season, and Dan Vladar as a surprising No. 1 goaltender. Gentille said Vladar had been reliable in a series against Stuart Skinner.
Sabres, Bruins and Buffalo’s edge
The Sabres-Bruins series brought the clearest split between momentum and skepticism. Goldman said Buffalo fans have not had the same success as Boston fans in sports over the last decade-plus, but she still thought the Sabres were taking the series. She called Boston a team that looked like a threat some nights and had patchy defense on others covered up by Jeremy Swayman.
Goldman also said, "I think the Sabres are taking things — they’re a wagon after all — but I won’t be surprised if it goes seven." Gentille answered with a line that fit the survey’s limits: "The survey wouldn’t let me pick “Sabres in three.”" Mirtle added that it was finally Rasmus Dahlin’s time to shine in games that matter, after the Sabres won the Atlantic Division and ended a historic playoff drought before the playoffs began.
The staff also had to spread beyond the first round to name conference winners, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the Stanley Cup, the most overrated team and a dark horse, with Nathan MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche mentioned as a potential championship team. For readers filling out brackets, the value is in the split opinions: Dallas drew confidence, Pittsburgh and Buffalo drew real debate, and the opening round is packed with enough top-tier teams to make clean picks hard to keep.
