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Sloan Piva
In sports, there’s nothing quite like playoff hockey. The 2025 NHL Playoffs are here, and the path to the Stanley Cup has been set for every contender in the league. For fans, that means it’s time to circle dates on calendars and plan out watch parties.
A whopping 10 different teams entered the playoffs with odds of +1200 or shorter to in it all, so it should be a wide-open race. After winning the Presidents’ Trophy as the top team during the regular season, the Jets barely made it into the second round with a Game 7 miracle. The top team in the East, the Capitals, had an easier time and also looks like a strong contender.
WATCH: Stanley Cup Final games LIVE on Sling
Don’t count out the reigning champion Panthers, who prevailed in the Battle of Florida to open the playoffs and face Toronto in a tough second-round matchup. Translation: it’s a wide-open race. And if any team has a chance to win it all, every game will be worth watching.
Looking forward to postseason hockey? Here’s everything you need to know about the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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The NHL playoffs will be split in the United States between the ESPN family of networks and the Turner channels. The two media corporations are in the fourth year of their seven-year contracts with the league.
ESPN and TNT are splitting the second-round series, as well as the conference final. The Stanley Cup Final will air on ABC.
In Canada, all the playoff games will be aired on Sportsnet and CBC in English and TVA Sports in French.
Fans in the United States and Canada looking to watch the NHL playoffs have options even if they don’t have cable. Games on ESPN’s platforms can be streamed through ESPN+ or through Fubo, while those on TNT’s network of channels can be streamed through Sling.
Canadians have streaming options as well, with Sportsnet games available to stream on SN NOW and CBC games streamable through CBC Gem.
Fans can listen to the 2025 NHL Playoffs on SiriusXM, with live play-by-play coverage for every game of the postseason.
New subscribers can enjoy SiriusXM for free for four months. Listen to live NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL games, plus NASCAR, college sports and more. Stay updated with all the news and get all the analysis on multiple sport-specific channels.
Sixteen teams qualify for the NHL playoffs, eight from each conference. The top three teams in each division will get the top six seeds in their respective conference’s playoff bracket. The remaining two spots in each conference will be filled with the next two highest-placed finishers, regardless of division. So, theoretically, one division could send five teams to the playoffs while the other sends only three.
In the first round, the division winner with the best record in each conference will face the worst wild-card team. Then, the teams that finished second and third in their division will face off. The winners from those games will play each other in the second round. Those winners will duke it out in the conference finals, sending one representative to the Stanley Cup Finals from each conference. Each round of the playoffs is best-of-seven, so the first team to win four games will advance.
Sloan Piva is a content producer for The Sporting News, primarily focused on betting, fantasy sports, and poker. A lifelong New Englander, Sloan earned his BA and MA in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts and now lives in coastal Rhode Island with his wife and two kids.