Acting as the league’s semifinal round, a conference finals appearance can either serve as an important milestone or as a frustrating place to burn out.
The second round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs is well underway, with eight remaining teams battling for this year’s Stanley Cup – where a new champion is guaranteed to be crowned after the two-time reigning champion Florida Panthers missed the postseason entirely.
Since the adoption of a 16-team playoff format for the 1979-80 season, the NHL has included perhaps the most long-winded and challenging postseason of all of the major North American professional sports – with the practice of best-of-seven series in the first round beginning in 1986-87.
In this format (which has also been used by the NBA since 2003 with some bracket differences), teams must win 16 games throughout the four rounds of the postseason in order to win the Stanley Cup.
While half of the league’s teams make the playoffs every year, it’s a loftier achievement for a team to sail on to the conference finals – which appropriately marks the halfway point in a team’s quest for a championship.
This makes a conference final appearance one of the more interesting team achievements in all of sports – if the Buffalo Sabres were to make the Eastern Conference Finals this year, that would likely be seen as a rousing success by the team and its fans, who last made the playoffs before this season in 2011 while being without a conference final appearance since 2007.
However, the milestone is certainly not created equal for all teams – ask any Dallas Stars fan, who just got done watching their team get eliminated in the first round of the playoffs after falling short in the Western Conference Finals in each of the past three seasons.
Carolina Hurricanes fans would likely agree with the sentiment that a conference finals berth alone is nothing to celebrate – with the Hurricanes appearing in three of the last eight Eastern Conference Finals and only winning one game combined across the three series.
Even for the teams that have made a habit out of getting to the conference finals, the round offers an unpredictable challenge each year – ensuring that the final eight wins are never as easy to come by as the first eight are in any given postseason run.
The Hurricanes are the only team left in this year’s playoffs that qualified for the conference finals last season – meaning three teams will break a drought of some sort by making it to NHL’s final four this year.
As of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, three teams remain without a conference final appearance in their franchise history: the Columbus Blue Jackets, Seattle Kraken and Utah Mammoth – with Columbus’ drought serving as the longest by far, tracing back to their first season in the NHL in 2000-01.
As for the rest of the league, here’s a look at the last time the other 29 teams made it to a conference final, beginning with the most recent occurrences:
For the purposes of this list, the 2021 semifinal will be treated as a conference final equivalent. The 2021 playoffs were conducted in a unique divisional format due to scheduling constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
2025-26 season
- Carolina Hurricanes
2024-25 season
- Edmonton Oilers
- Dallas Stars
- Florida Panthers
2023-24 season
- New York Rangers
2022-23 season
- Vegas Golden Knights
2021-22 season
- Tampa Bay Lightning
- Colorado Avalanche
2020-21 season
- Montreal Canadiens
- New York Islanders
2018-19 season
- Boston Bruins
- St. Louis Blues
- San Jose Sharks
2017-18 season
- Washington Capitals
- Winnipeg Jets
2016-17 season
- Pittsburgh Penguins
- Ottawa Senators
- Nashville Predators
- Anaheim Ducks
2014-15 season
- Chicago Blackhawks
2013-14 season
- Los Angeles Kings
2011-12 season
- New Jersey Devils
2010-11 season
- Vancouver Canucks
2009-10 season
- Philadelphia Flyers
2008-09 season
- Detroit Red Wings
2006-07 season
- Buffalo Sabres
2003-04 season
- Calgary Flames
2002-03 season
- Minnesota Wild
2001-02 season
- Toronto Maple Leafs
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