2025 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs: Updated Odds for All 16 Teams

You've got to speculate to accumulate.

The line can mean different things to different people, but when it comes to the NHL at this time of the year, it can only be referring to one thing:

The updated odds for the Stanley Cup winner.

The fine folks at DraftKings have punched the annual clock and produced a hot-off-the-digital-presses list of what those speculators could be accumulating if they choose the right team to be first to 16 postseason victories.

Lest anyone forget, the Florida Panthers were a co-second choice on the pre-tournament list last season and ultimately rewarded their faithful with a +700 payoff and a Cup hoist. The B/R hockey team gave its seal of approval to Florida's title chances before play began, suggesting "Simply put, there aren't many teams in the field that look any better."

The same B/R hockey team did its April duty for 2025, too, crunching the numbers and assembling this year's morning-line list in descending order from the prohibitive to the probable, with a thought added in for anyone seeking wagering counsel.

Take a look at what we came up with and let us know how we did.

NOTE: Odds/stats updated after games on Tuesday, April 15.

Short-term advice? Save your money.

Longer-term? Buy low, sell high.

The Canadiens are simply not equipped for a deep run at this point, but the gradual melding of young talent under coach Martin St. Louis is progressing to the point where Montreal not reaching a final four in the next five years or so will be as surprising as it doing so.

Admit it. There's at least a piece of you that wants to take a chance on the Blues, given their torrid second half, the double-digit win streak and the fact that they were the league's best team (by win percentage) from Feb. 1 to the end.

And we'll concede we'd be right there with you if it weren't for how treacherous a path it'll be out west, particularly with zero chance for home-ice advantage.

St. Louis starts with the Presidents' Trophy winners, then would have to handle either Dallas or Colorado simply to get halfway to a Cup. From there, it's whatever's left standing from the Pacific, provided Minnesota doesn't do its own upset number as a seven seed.

Bottom line: Though Jordan Binnington has both Cup-winning and 4 Nations-saving street cred, doing it against four straight favorites is a pretty big ask.

The Ottawa Senators are the most intriguing of the list's lowest tier.

No, that doesn't mean we're going to drop $100 with any thought that it'll turn into $3,500 by the onset of summer. But if we were looking for an outsider to crash the party into the second round at least, the Senators would be it.

Ottawa handled the Toronto Maple Leafs in their season series and, if nothing else, will be a tough opening out for its Ontario rival. Still, winning one intra-provincial series does not mean adding three more on top of it ought to be expected.

That said, if there's a future parlay on a Senators-Canadiens conference title series in a few years, count us in.

The Wild already provided a pretty thrilling entrance to the Western playoff party, with a pulled goaltender leading to the goal that clinched the point that punched their ticket. And what a story it'd be if goalie Marc-Andrew Fleury's victory lap through the NHL was prolonged by a couple more months.

But it simply doesn't seem possible for Minnesota, which scuffled through the season's back half without Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek for dozens of games apiece. Both are back now, but given Vegas as a first-round opponent, simply advancing to the second round seems prohibitive, let alone two more beyond it.

Unless there's a familial allegiance, this isn't worth a penny.

Oh, what could have been for the New Jersey Devils.

If only everyone was healthy, that is.

The Garden Staters are a skilled, dynamic group when fully stocked, and the acquisition of goalie Jacob Markstrom after last season shored up an obvious weakness.

But not having Jack Hughes, who was on pace for a 35-goal, 93-point season when he was injured in early March, seems too big a blow to overcome.

The Devils were a pedestrian 9-9-1 down the stretch without him, and, while a first-round upset of the Carolina Hurricanes isn't inconceivable, it's difficult to envision the sort of magic it'd take to win an additional 12 games against stiffer competition.

And now, we begin the list of teams on whom a bet to win the Cup seems a little less reliant on blind faith and a little more rooted in an actual winning path.

The Los Angeles Kings arrive to the dance as the sixth overall team in the league and at the top of the heap when it comes to performance (22-7-3) since Feb. 1.

Their offense (3.53 goals per game) is tied for fifth in that stretch and their defense (2.31 goals-against average) is tied for second, and the playoff net will be minded by a veteran in Darcy Kuemper who held Cup aloft just three years ago.

If you're looking for a bargain with a legit case to be made, you'll love L.A.

Perhaps, in the interest of everyone's emotional well-being, we should skip right past this one until we get a little closer to the end of the tournament.

Any hockey fan worth his or her stick tape knows Toronto hasn't won a Cup since 1967 and has managed just one playoff series victory since the spring of 2004.

Their generational sniper, Auston Matthews, was 6 at the time.

But we're about hope here, too, and that prompts us to repeat that the Maple Leafs won their first non-COVID division title this season since 2000, and to remind that Toronto's 14-6-2 record since March 1 was second in the East behind only Ottawa.

Oh, wait. That's who they're playing in the first round?

Never mind. Nothing to see here.

Will the real Winnipeg Jets please stand up?

Are you the team that won the Presidents' Trophy this season (ignoring the fact that no team has won both it and the Stanley Cup in 12 years), or the team that racked up 52 wins and 110 points last season only to flame out in five games against an opponent you'd swept in the regular season with a +13 goal differential?

Such are the questions swirling in Manitoba these days.

Make no mistake, the 2024-25 Jets were dominant from the jump, going without a regulation loss until their ninth game and not dropping another until game 17.

Eleven players scored double-digit goals, no team had a better power play, and no goalie had a better presence in the triple-crown stats that Connor Hellebuyck, who was second in save percentage (.924), tied for first in goals-against average (2.02) and held first by himself in shutouts (8).

So, there's plenty of reasons to like them. But the guys who set the lines aren't usually wrong, or at least not wrong by this much. Buyer beware.

Here's another that'll test how you feel about odds-makers.

The Washington Capitals were nearly as dominant all season as the Jets, yet they find themselves sharing the eighth spot when it comes to Cup favorites.

Lest anyone forget, the Capitals were the first team to clinch a division title and ended the season with a double-digit lead over second-place Carolina. They were five points clear of any other team in the East and, like Winnipeg, were top 10 in both offense (second, 3.51 goals per game) and defense (ninth, 2,77).

So why the lack of love?

Though admittedly working with a cushion, Washington was a far-closer-to-the-pack 7-6-1 after St. Patrick's Day, and goaltender Logan Thompson, though he established a career high with 31 wins, has all of four career starts in the playoffs.

He's hurt, too, and hasn't played since April 2, leaving an equally unproven Charlie Lindgren, with zero wins in four playoff starts, to shoulder the load until he's back.

Could Alex Ovechkin and Co. still find the mojo needed for a second parade in seven years? Sure. But if you're as confident in them as in some others, you're in the minority.

Want another bargain opportunity? Look at another Pacific team.

The Vegas Golden Knights haven't reeled off a ridiculous number of consecutive wins, nor have they mounted a real challenge for the league's top overall spot.

But what Vegas has shown is consistent excellence.

The Golden Knights got off to a 7-3-1 start through October and never dipped below "NHL .500" in any subsequent month, ultimately surging toward the finish line with a 10-win March that locked up their fourth Pacific title in seven seasons.

Their offense is fifth in the league at 3.33 goals per game, their power play is second at 28.8 percent, and their goaltending–driven by Adin Hill and his career-high 50 starts–is fourth with a 2.63 goals-against average.

No 100-point scorers. No MVP candidates. Just a good solid team.

In other words, if you're looking for safety at 10-to-1, here it is.

Go ahead, bet against a Jon Cooper team in the playoffs. We dare you.

The Tampa Bay Lightning aren't an automatic Cup contender every springtime, but the coach's past track record of 10 berths in 11 full seasons, and at least one series win in six of those seasons, is hard to argue against.

And that's not even mentioning four finals appearances and two banners.

Cooper and Co. experienced a resurgence in 2024-25, jumping from fourth to second in the Atlantic and reaching 100 points for the first time since the last finals trip.

Many pieces of the two-Cup core remain, particularly playoff goaltending whiz Andrei Vasilevskiy and his 66 wins and seven shutouts. And they've been augmented by the likes of Jake Guentzel, who supplanted Steven Stamkos by reaching the 40-goal and 80-point plateaus in his first season on Florida's gulf coast.

If they get by Round 1 with the defending champs, look out.

So, about those defending champions.

The team they beat in seven games, the Edmonton Oilers, begin the postseason in familiar territory among the favorites and with familiar opposition against the Los Angeles Kings, but it'd be hard to open the tournament with the same sort of optimism they'd carried into last spring.

Injuries have hit particularly hard in recent weeks, with forwards Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman and goaltender Stuart Skinner missing multiple games, and first-pair defenseman Mattias Ekholm already being ruled out of the series with the Kings with a malady that's cost him more than a dozen games.

McDavid is optimistic that the key cogs (besides Ekholm) will be "ready to roll" for the series opener and beyond and is reveling in the idea that the reigning Western champs are being counted out, insisting "we're a dangerous team when we’re rolling and we’re healthy. I think you’ll see that over the next little while."

Maybe so. But we'll believe it when we see it.

Looking for the Winnipeg Jets of the East?

Allow us to present the Carolina Hurricanes.

Coach Rod Brind'Amour's team has been a fixture among the conference's elite for several seasons, reaching 100 points for the last three and finishing no worse than second in their division for the last five, including 2024-25.

But it's not translated to the tournament, where the Hurricanes were a second-round casualty in 2021, 2022 and 2024, and were abruptly swept the one time they did make it into the Eastern final in 2023.

Top-eight numbers on both offense and defense support the premise that a deep run remains possible, perhaps matching the Brind'Amour-captained Cup run of 2006, but Carolina, too, remains in the "they'll have to prove it" column.

Looking for a team with star power, look no further than Colorado.

The Avalanche feature a perennial MVP candidate in Nathan MacKinnon up front and this generation's heir to Bobby Orr on the blue line in Cale Makar, a duo that combined for more than 60 goals and 200 points.

And that's not even mentioning a skilled core that still includes six double-digit goal scorers even after deals that shipped Mikko Rantanen and Casey Mittelstadt away.

The missing ingredient since a Cup run three springs ago has been consistent goaltending and they seemed to find it with a December deal that brought Mackenzie Blackwood from San Jose.

The 28-year-old has played the best hockey of his career since the trade, winning 22 times in 37 appearances and posting a 2.33 goals-against average that's 0.67 better than the 3.00 he'd played to across 19 games with the Sharks.

Twelve goals allowed in three April starts are a bit of a concern, but if Blackwood is ready to shoulder a playoff load for the first time, Colorado is a team to fear.

It's good to be the champs.

The Florida Panthers arrive to this year's playoffs on the heels of two straight trips to the finals, including last year's classic in which they blew a 3-0 series lead against Edmonton before winning a 2-1 decision at home in Game 7.

So, even though they finished third in the Atlantic and will have to open the run on the road at intra-state rival Tampa Bay, there's no team more familiar with the route.

Perhaps most important to the chance at a repeat title, though, is the health of sparkplug forward Matthew Tkachuk, who's not played since sustaining an injury at the 4 Nations event in February. The Panthers were 13-11-1 in their final 25 games without him, including an ugly 3-6-1 down the stretch even after the arrival of trade-deadline pickup Brad Marchand, who won a Cup in Boston in 2011.

Tkachuk is hoping to be ready for either the opener with the Lightning or soon after, and Florida's chances (and the numbers attached to it) will surely be impacted by either his progress or lack thereof.

Maybe this is the spot to be in. Or maybe it's not.

Carolina was anointed as the champion in waiting prior to last season's playoffs and underachieved to the tune of a second-round loss to the New York Rangers.

Dallas arrives with every bit as much pre-tourney street cred as the Hurricanes and probably more, given the presence of an elite goaltender in Jake Oettinger and perhaps the deepest and most playoff-ready team in the league.

The Stars reached the Western final before bowing to Edmonton last spring, losing a decisive Game 6 to the Oilers despite a 34-10 advantage in shots on goal.

They still roll out multiple lines of skill and grit, featuring four players with 28 or more goals and four others who netted more than 10. They win more than 50 percent of their faceoffs, too, and the league's fifth-best penalty kill yielded an 82.1 success rate.

And they reached last season's final four without the suddenly well-traveled Rantanen, who had 18 points in 19 games in Dallas and has 101 points in 81 career playoff games, including six straight appearances with 10 points or more.

More so than anyone else's, it's their tournament to lose.