NHL Ultimate Loser 2026: The race for the Stanley Cup’s most unwanted title
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Good morning to everyone except anyone who has dreams in their head and they won’t go. If you’re American and don’t understand the reference, consider yourself lucky.
One conference final is heating up and the other might end tonight, so let’s get into it.
Connor McDavid. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Ultimate loser race
The identity of the “ultimate loser” is one of my favorite postseason subplots. And this year, we might get an especially juicy one.
If you’re new to the concept, the ultimate loser is the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that loses to the Stanley Cup champion. Yes, that seems like too many “loses,” but it adds up.
The appeal here is simple. While every playoff loss is disappointing, some are worse than others. If you lose to a team that goes on to win the Cup, well, at least you lost to the best. And in fact, if you lose to the eventual champs, you could even convince yourself that your team was the second-best in the league, and just happened to run into the one team that was a little bit better. You were close, in other words.
But if you’re the ultimate loser? Forget it. You literally can’t end up any further from a Cup than ultimate loser status. There’s just no way to spin your postseason into a positive when the cards fall like that.
With four teams in the conference finals, we’re down to four candidates for this year’s ultimate loser crown. The two Eastern contenders are the Boston Bruins (who lost to the Sabres, who lost to the Habs) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (who lost to the Flyers, who lost to the Hurricanes). It’s nice to see the Penguins back in the running after their historic near-miss a few years ago, but otherwise neither of these teams would be an especially interesting ultimate loser. Neither was expected to make the playoffs at all, so falling far short of the Cup wouldn’t exactly be a stunning result.
But out west, it gets interesting. One of the candidates there is the Dallas Stars, who lost to the Wild, who lost to the Avalanche. The Stars had the third-best record in the league during the season and were clearly all-in on a championship after firing coach Pete DeBoer for the sin of winning only two rounds a year. On the surface, they seem to be a team that’s right there, maybe just a bounce or two away from finally winning it all. If they end up as this year’s ultimate loser, do you have to re-evaluate? What if they’re further away than we thought?
That question looms even larger with our final team, the one that lost to the Ducks, who lost to the Knights. Yes, it’s the Edmonton Oilers, the team that came into this year’s postseason facing more pressure than anyone.
With Vegas leading Colorado, the Oilers are on the verge of narrowly avoiding ultimate loser honors in what was supposed to be a make-or-break season.
Andrei Svechnikov. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
While You Were Sleeping
Hurricanes 3, Canadiens 2 (OT)
Look, folks, the hockey gods aren’t always going to be able to churn out new scripts for every game. So, last night, we got an early-summer rerun, as Game 3 looked a lot like Game 2.
The Hurricanes dominated the shot clock and led 2-1 for a long stretch. The Canadiens hung around, largely thanks to goaltender Jakub Dobeš. The game went to overtime, where one of Carolina’s top scorers came through with the winner in a 3-2 final.
Here’s that winner, courtesy of Andrei Svechnikov:
The Hurricanes are now up 2-1 in the series, running their postseason record to an impressive 10-1 overall.
Game 4 goes tomorrow night in Montreal, and it feels at least a little like a must-win for the Canadiens. They’re giving Carolina a run, absolutely, and could have escaped with a win last night if an extra bounce had gone their way (including losing a third-period goal to an offside review). But at some point, escaping isn’t enough.
It would be nice to see the Habs in control, as they were in Game 1. Was that game just about Carolina being rusty after a long layoff, or is there something there that Montreal can get back?
As always, our writers had it all covered:
💡 Trivia time!
The list of players who’ve suited up for both the Habs and the Hurricanes is fun and packed with “Wait, when did he play for them?” names such as Alex Semin, Tomáš Kaberle, Sergei Samsonov and, for five whole games in Carolina, Max Pacioretty. But can you name the only Hall of Famer to have played for both franchises?
A few hints: No, the answer we’re looking for isn’t Eric Staal — he’s not in the HHOF (at least not yet). But it is a forward. He played almost 350 regular-season games for one team and just 20 for the other. But he did win one of his three Stanley Cup titles with one of these teams.
Your answer is at the end of the newsletter.
Coast to Coast
🤫 Pierre LeBrun is back with a new rumblings column. This one has the latest on Nico Hischier, Bruce Cassidy, Bowen Bryam and lots more.
🏒 The PWHL crowned a new champion a week ago. Now things get really busy.
🐈 It’s a copycat league, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to guide the narrative. Here’s my annual attempt to find three fun lessons from each of the conference finalists (plus one anti-fun lesson to avoid).
👶 Corey Pronman has been grilling scouts and execs about this year’s draft class. On Monday, he had their top 10 players; today, the focus is on the defensemen.
✅ The Stanley Cup playoff checklist project continues with a look at the Nashville Predators.
Nathan MacKinnon. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
What to Watch
📺 Avalanche @ Golden Knights
9 p.m. ET on ESPN / Sportsnet / CBC / TVA
Note the time here, as this is the only conference final game scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET.
So, that’s good news for the Avs: Their season will end an hour later than it otherwise would.
OK, maybe that’s harsh. But it’s getting awfully tough to see a path out of this series for Colorado, at least one that doesn’t involve golf clubs. Sunday night’s collapse felt like the final straw — a dominant team swamped with injuries but finding a way to summon one of its best periods of the season, only to come up short anyway.
Now the Knights are up 3-0, they’ve got home ice, Mark Stone is back and the Avs’ two best players are both hurt. Cale Makar made his return to the lineup in Game 3, and we assume he’ll play tonight. Nathan MacKinnon will try to go too, after taking a shot off the side of the knee. But neither will be anywhere close to 100 percent. The Avalanche are good enough to beat a lot of teams without Makar or MacKinnon at full power. The Knights, it appears, are not one of those teams.
Mark Lazerus watched it all play out on Sunday, and yesterday he tried to use his column to come up with some hope for Colorado. It was a tough ask. Beyond the injuries, the Avs are losing faith in their goaltending duo. Even Jared Bednar seems to be out of answers, describing the team’s morale as “as low as it can get.” It’s bad.
And sure, it’s one win away from getting better. Maybe the Golden Knights let their opponents off the ropes and Colorado can steal one on the road tonight. If so, they’d head back home with some hope. Get another win and then … well, they’d still be only halfway there. But they’d have a chance. This team won four straight games five times this year, including in the first round against the Kings. But those Kings were not these Knights, and that was a healthy and rested Avs team.
It sure feels like it’s over. We’ll see if that feeling turns into reality tonight.
Full NHL schedule here. Try streaming games like these for free on Fubo.
(Jamie Sabau / Getty Images)
No Dumb Questions
We believe that in hockey, as in life, there are no dumb questions. So if you have something you’ve always wondered about the sport, ask away by emailing us at redlight@theathletic.com.
Kicking and screaming
Along the same lines as last week’s kicking question, if a player kicks the puck towards the net as a shot and the goalie makes the save, but another player scores off the rebound, does the goal count? Even if the rebound chance is only there because a goalie made a save on a shot/kick that would not have counted if it went in? — Jeff M.
Yes, that would count as a goal.
Basically, the logic here is that while kicking the puck is not a legal way to score a goal, it’s also not an automatic stoppage. In fact, as we covered last week, kicking the puck is allowed in pretty much every circumstance other than when it directly leads to a goal.
In other words, this isn’t a scenario like a puck played with a high stick. Even if the goalie makes the initial save, that high-stick should have been an automatic whistle. If it was missed, and the rebound led to a goal, the defending team could challenge on the basis of a missed stoppage, and the goal would be taken off the board.
That’s not the case with a kick. So, if a player tried to hoof the puck into the net and the goalie made the save, another player could score on the rebound and it would count. In fact, any skater playing the puck with their stick negates a previous kick.
The one exception here that a lot of fans miss: The goaltender simply making contact with the puck after it’s been kicked is not enough for the goal to count. So, a kicked puck that deflects off a goalie’s pad or even stick before entering the net would be no good.
But a teammate scoring on a rebound? That goal is going to count.
By the way, here’s one more fun fact about this topic: The phrase “distinctive kicking motion” does not appear anywhere in the NHL rulebook. It’s a “distinct kicking motion,” at least according to the strict letter of the law. Somewhere along the way, we all just decided to say distinctive instead. Well, all of us except the true rulebook nerds.
Mark Recchi in 2006. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
Trivia Answer
The only Hall of Famer to play for both the Canadiens and the Hurricanes is winger Mark Recchi.
He played for Montreal from 1995 to 1999, then had a brief stint in Carolina after the 2006 trade deadline. That was the year the Hurricanes won it all, earning Recchi his second of three rings, to go with the ones he won in his very first playoff run (with the Penguins back in 1991) and his very last (with the Bruins in 2011).
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