NHL 2026 Eastern Conference Odds: Florida on Route to Quadruple Championships

Is The Eastern Conference on The Decline?

In recent years the Eastern Conference has given us more Stanley Cups than the West, with 18 Stanley Cups won by the Eastern Conference since the year 2000.

However, we feel it’s the West’s time to conquer for a few seasons, and the top-rated sportsbooks agree with 4 of the top 6 favorites to win the Stanley Cup from the Western Conference and 7 of the top 12 in the NHL Stanley Cup Futures betting market.

With that being said, the state of Florida has strongly represented the East with 4 Stanley Cups in the previous six seasons. There hasn’t been an Eastern Conference Stanley Cup winner outside of the state of Florida since the Washington Capitals in 2018.

Nobody Does it Like Florida

There’s a reason the Florida Panthers remain the favorites to win the Eastern Conference in 2026, and that’s simply because nobody can play like them. The Panthers suffocate their opponents on the ice, they have this all in mentality and teams can’t cope with the intensity of the play, especially during the playoffs when it’s a best of seven.

Florida’s style of play is built for the playoffs, they do it better than anybody else and only seem to be growing stronger as each season passes.

All we have to do is take a look at their post-season player stats, whilst their finals opponents, the Edmonton Oilers, had the top two point scorers in the playoffs. They only had 9 players in double-digit points. The Panthers, on the other hand, had 11 and whilst the Oilers only had 4 players to score 20+ points in the playoffs. The Panthers had 6, almost 7 with one player ending on 19, whilst the Oilers’ next best had 14 points.

It’s hard to look past the Florida Panthers at +300, but these odds are too low for us at this stage of the season, the Panthers could be in a slump this season for all we know, so we would rather take some value shots, so who holds the value in the Eastern Conference?

Who Holds The Best Pre-Season Value

It’s heartbreaking for American fans outside of Florida because besides the Panthers, we believe the Tampa Bay Lightning will be much stronger this season and BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review) already have them marked as the 3^rd favorite to win the East at +800 NHL betting odds.

We really like this set of odds for the Tampa Bay Lightning, and wouldn’t be surprised to see these significantly shorten when the season starts. Nikita Kucherov continues to put up a lot of points and with a strong supporting cast like Brayden Point and Jake Guntzel as well as solid defencemen and one of the top goaltenders in the game, it’s hard to ignore the Lightning at these odds.

The Carolina Hurricanes are a team we are unsure of at the moment, yes they have all the pieces but they just can’t seem to clinch the Eastern Conference having finished runner up in 3 of the previous 6 years.

If we had to make a big outsider bet we would take the Canadian outfight the Montreal Canadiens at +2800, the Canadiens have a lot of young strong talent and have been slowly improving with each passing season. Their Stanley Cup odds have already drifted from +8500 to +5500.

Stanley Cup Winner Odds