NHL Preview: What to know about the 202122 season

There is more high-level hockey on tap over the next nine months than ever before.

Thanks to the addition of the Seattle Kraken as the NHL’S 32nd franchise and the return to a full schedule, 1,312 regular-season games are set to be played before the start of the playoffs next spring. Add 30 games in Beijing as the league’s players return to the Olympics and the road to the Stanley Cup is a marathon.

The season gets under way Tuesday night when the back-toback champion Tampa Bay Lightning raise another banner and host the Pittsburgh Penguins, the last team to win the Cup twice in a row in 2016 and 2017. The Krakenalso play their first regular-season game — at Vegas, four years after the Golden Knights were the league’s last expansion team.

AP Hockey Writers Larry Lage, John Wawrow and Stephen Whyno get you ready for the season with a rundown of what to know. WHAT’S NEW Unleashing the Kraken brings the NHL to the Pacific Northwest with a team that’s selling merchandise at a rapid pace and should contend right away like Vegas did. Seattle would have to reach the Stanley Cup Final to match the Golden Knights.

The two teams that get to the final will again go the traditional way through the Eastern or Western Conference, after the 56-game 2021 season was played entirely within four divisions until the semifinals. Cross-border play is back, too, and every team is scheduled to play the other 31 at least twice — once at home and on the road.

Those games will air on ESPN’S networks, ABC and TNT in the U.S. in the first season of a new TV deal. Puck movement will be tracked with microchips for the first time, opening the door for a Zamboni load of new data and gambling opportunities.