A history test going around this week says only six teams can realistically win the 2027 Stanley Cup: Carolina, Colorado, Dallas, Edmonton, Florida and Vegas. The filter comes from the last 14 champions. Make the playoffs in at least four of the last five seasons, and win at least three playoff rounds in the four springs before the title run. Every Cup winner of the past decade and a half passed it.
It is a good filter for pedigree, and it is a fair point that nobody wins a Cup out of nowhere. But pedigree is a description of the past. Run the same six teams through the numbers that describe how good they are now, and one of them does not belong. The team it keeps out belongs in its place.
How do the six look on the underlying numbers?
Three of them look like contenders on every measure. Three have a hole.
Colorado was the best team in hockey by either measure, and Carolina won the Cup. Dallas won 112 points with average five-on-five play and very good goaltending, a profile we looked at in September. Vegas and Edmonton both control play well enough and have spent years losing goals in their own net.
Florida is the outlier. It finished 19th at five-on-five, 26th in goaltending, and missed the playoffs with 84 points. That season was played without Aleksander Barkov, and he is now out again for six to eight weeks after hurting himself in the second game of this season.
Why does Florida pass the test at all?
Because the test looks backwards. Florida reached three straight Cup Finals from 2023 to 2025 and won two of them, so it banks a pile of playoff rounds that no other team can match. Barkov captained the team through every one of those rounds. The filter cannot tell the difference between a team with its captain and a team without him, and for the next month and a half Florida is the second kind.
We covered what that looks like on the ice this week, including the move of Sam Reinhart to centre. And Florida's playoff record against Carolina shows how good this group is at full strength. Full strength is the problem.
Who should replace Florida?
Tampa Bay. The Lightning fail the test because they have not won a playoff series since 2022. On every current measure they belong.
| Team | 2025-26 points | 5-on-5 xG share (rank) | Goals saved above expected (rank) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa Bay | 106 | 54.0% (5th) | +12.5 (11th) |
| Ottawa | 99 | 55.6% (3rd) | -24.0 (30th) |
| Utah | 92 | 52.4% (6th) | +14.1 (10th) |
| Minnesota | 104 | 51.5% (11th) | +7.9 (12th) |
Tampa Bay was fifth at five-on-five, above Edmonton, Dallas and Florida, and its goaltending saved 12.5 goals above expected. Andrei Vasilevskiy is already being named an early Vezina favourite. Nikita Kucherov has six points in four games. The weakness is the blue line, which we flagged in September after the team replaced a 70-point defenceman with a 36-year-old.
Ottawa is the interesting near miss. Only Colorado and Carolina had a better five-on-five share, and only two teams lost more goals in goal. Fix that and the Senators belong on this list too, but Linus Ullmark left a game early this week after a crease collision.
Does the first week change anything?
Not much, and it should not. Four or five games is noise, but for the record, Tampa Bay has taken 60.1 per cent of the five-on-five expected goals so far, fourth in the league. Florida has taken 65.0 per cent, first, despite scoring only eight goals in four games. Colorado, Vegas and Carolina are all above 56 per cent. Edmonton has scored 22 goals and allowed 16 in four games, which is its own story about the crease.
The case for the history test, stated fairly
The argument for trusting the six goes like this. Fifteen years of champions all had the pedigree, playoff hockey rewards teams that have been there, and an 82-game expected goals number says little about a seven-game series against an elite opponent. Florida has won two Cups in three years and Barkov should be back by December, with months to spare before April. Tampa Bay, for all its numbers, has lost in the first round four years running.
The other side is the one the current numbers make. The test rewards Florida for rounds won by a team that, without its captain, finished 19th at five-on-five and missed the playoffs. It punishes Tampa Bay for recent playoff exits while ignoring a roster that ranked fifth at even strength with better goaltending than four of the six. Patterns hold until a team breaks them, and Tampa Bay is the team best placed to do it.
The six should be Colorado, Carolina, Dallas, Edmonton, Vegas and Tampa Bay. Florida rejoins the list the day Barkov does.
What to watch
Barkov's return date and Vasilevskiy's numbers over the next six weeks will settle this faster than any formula. Every team's five-on-five share and goaltending figures are on the team stats page, and the race itself is on the standings.