Avalanche open as a top five favorite to win the 2026 Stanley Cup

The 2024-25 NHL season has officially come to a close after the Florida Panthers embarrassed the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday night to bring the Stanley Cup to South Florida for the second consecutive year. With last season officially in the rearview, the 2025-26 season is officially in the driver’s seat with talks about the next rendition of the Stanley Cup Final not even 24 hours after this year’s was completed.

For the Colorado Avalanche, they are once again at the top of the league with the fifth-best odds to bring Lord Stanley home to Denver for the fourth time in franchise history. Their +1,000 odds are also the third-shortest mark in the Western Conference.

2025-26 STANLEY CUP ODDS ARE NOW LIVE 🚨

The Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers open as favorites… will they meet for a THIRD-consecutive season? 🤯 pic.twitter.com/trhliryhub

— DraftKings Sportsbook (@DKSportsbook) June 18, 2025

This is the seventh consecutive year in which the Avalanche have been in the top five (including ties) to win the Stanley Cup in the preseason, including a stretch of four straight seasons at the start of the decade in which they were the favorite (2021-2024).

The odds for the individual awards are out as well, and Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar are right back at the top of the board for their respective trophies. MacKinnon sits at +500, the second-best mark only to Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, to win the Hart Memorial Trophy for the second time in three seasons, and +1,200 to win the Rocket Richard Trophy (tied fifth-best), annually awarded to the NHL’s top goal scorer.

For Cale Makar, who just accepted his second Norris Trophy in four years, he is the odds-on favorite to win the Norris once again, sitting at +175. Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes (+220) is the only player who is close to Makar to open things up, as the bookmakers clearly see the trophy for the league’s top defenseman as a two horse race (-195 odds for the winner to be either of those two).

For the Avalanche fans who like to get some good value with their selections, there’s a couple of players rocking the burgundy and blue who are on the board for the individual awards, but much father down than the likes of MacKinnon and Makar. Mackenzie Blackwood is +3,000 to win the Vezina Trophy for the NHL’s best goalie (T-11th), Devon Toews is +50,000 to win the Norris and Martin Necas is +50,000 to win the Hart.

Former Avalanche star Mikko Rantanen is +7,500 to win the Hart and +3,000 to win the Rocket Richard.

There’s still plenty of work to do for an Avalanche team that was 12 minutes away from advancing to the Conference Semifinals but instead were sent home by the Dallas Stars. They still have some tweaks to make on the coaching staff after Ray Bennett was let go of his duties in May, finalize the roster with some potential free agent moves and most importantly of all, stay healthy. If all three of those go Colorado’s way, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be one of the favorites to win the Cup once again.

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