Death, taxes, and the Toronto Maple Leafs opening the NHL season against the Montreal Canadiens.

While the full extent of each NHL team’s schedule for the 2026-27 season is set to be released on July 16, the NHL announced all 32 home openers on Wednesday, and to the surprise of nobody, their home opener will be against the Canadiens on September 29.

It will mark the seventh year in a row the Leafs open the season against Montreal, with their last non-Canadiens opening night coming in 2019-20, when they opened the season against the Ottawa Senators. The Leafs and Habs typically rotate between which team hosts the season-opener, but the Leafs will have home ice for the second year in a row after defeating the Canadiens 5-2 at home in last season’s opener. Bobby McMann scored the first goal of the season, while William Nylander added a goal and two assists for a three-point performance on opening night. Calle Jarnkrok, Auston Matthews, and Morgan Rielly scored the other goals. The Habs would ultimately go on to have the last laugh, making the Eastern Conference Final while the Leafs did a nosedive and finished fifth-last in the league to miss the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Granted, they did get Gavin McKenna out of this, so perhaps it was worth it?

The announcement bodes well for the Leafs, who are currently riding a ten-game home-opener winning streak. Their last loss in a home-opener was all the way back in 2015, when they lost 3-1 to the Canadiens. That predates the Auston Matthews era, for those keeping score.

The Maple Leafs will begin a new era in 2025-26 with a whirlwind of changes everywhere from the front office to the bench to the ice, and home-opener result be damned, the hope will be that the Leafs can make it back to the playoffs with the number of new faces they have.