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(Photo\/AP)<\/p>\n\t\t(Photo\/AP)<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The Carolina Hurricanes will raise their second\u00a0Stanley Cup championship<\/a>\u00a0banner on Sept. 29 before hosting the Florida Panthers to kick off the NHL season.<\/p>\n The opener pits the most recent champions against the winners the previous two years. The Panthers look primed to contend for another title\u00a0until injuries derailed them<\/a>\u00a0and caused them to miss the playoffs. Carolina lost only one game to get through the Eastern Conference, then defeated Vegas in the final to win it all for the first time since 2006.<\/p>\n The league announced home openers for all 32 clubs Wednesday. The full schedule is set to be released on Thursday.<\/p>\n The Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs, the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins will also face off as part of a five-game curtain raiser. The Chicago Blackhawks visit the Vegas Golden Knights in the nightcap.<\/p>\n Play begins before October as the league moves to an 84-game schedule for the first time since 1993-94. The 1,344 games will be the most in NHL history.\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tTags: Boston Bruins<\/a>, Carolina Hurricanes<\/a>, Chicago Blackhawks<\/a>, Florida Panthers<\/a>, Hockey<\/a>, Montreal Canadiens<\/a>, New York Rangers<\/a>, NHL<\/a>, NHL 2026 season<\/a>, NHL schedule<\/a>, NHL season opener<\/a>, Stanley Cup banner<\/a>, Stanley Cup champions<\/a>, Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>, Vegas Golden Knights<\/a>\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo\/AP) NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The Carolina Hurricanes will raise their second\u00a0Stanley Cup championship\u00a0banner on Sept. 29 before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[95,265,29,96,57,5,264,21,5147,35,4,41648,2967,22245,68585,2136,31,39],"class_list":["post-623743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal-canadiens","tag-boston-bruins","tag-canadiens","tag-carolina-hurricanes","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-florida-panthers","tag-hockey","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-montrealcanadiens","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-2026-season","tag-nhl-schedule","tag-nhl-season-opener","tag-stanley-cup-banner","tag-stanley-cup-champions","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-vegas-golden-knights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116928298820085936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}