Photo: joelogon. Source (Openverse). License: by-sa.
The 2026-27 NHL season begins with five games on one Tuesday night, and the morning after is when the checking work starts. Two lists have to line up before anything else: the official NHL scoreboard and the Kalshi NHL board. This guide reconciles both using dated snapshots from September 30, 2026.
Primary sources checked: the NHL's 2026-27 regular-season schedule announcement, the official gamecenter page for the headliner game, Kalshi's public API event listing for the NHL series, and the CFTC's designated contract market record for KalshiEX. Every score, ticker, and rule below traces to one of those sources.
All five games on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 were regular-season contests (gameType 2 in the official feed) and all five reached a final state. The scores, from the NHL score feed snapshot taken at 2026-09-30T05:31:57Z:
The headliner supplied the storyline. Per the official three-stars data, first star was defenseman Gustav Forsling (FLA) with the game's only goal, second star was goaltender Jacoby Markström (FLA) with a shutout, and third star was goaltender B. Bussi (CAR). Carolina raised its second Stanley Cup championship banner before the 5 p.m. ET puck drop, opening an ESPN tripleheader in the U.S., per the league's schedule release. The NHL scores page carries the same finals. One boundary holds throughout: final scores are facts, not settlement statements, and whether any market resolves is Kalshi's process.
Snapshots of the Kalshi API taken between 2026-09-30T05:31Z and 05:34Z showed the following:
The game-level counts are the real change. The September 22 tipoff snapshot showed zero open game-level events, so the morning-after list view is the first dated evidence those series had populated. The Stanley Cup winner futures breakdown covers the champion market's structure, and the Hart Trophy market guide covers the player field.
One example from the snapshot, exactly as the API returned it:
The list view that morning also showed open game-level events covering September 29 (one completed Chicago-Vegas spread/total event still listed), September 30 (NYI-TOR, PIT-PHI, LA-COL), and October 1 (BUF-CBJ, PHI-NJ). That is a dated observation only. It does not predict which games will have markets tomorrow, and the still-listed September 29 event should be treated as neither settled nor unsettled until Kalshi's own market page says so.
These fields invite misreading, so the distinction matters. KXNHL-27's uniform 2029-06-30T14:00:00Z close_time implies nothing about when the Finals happen, and KXNHLHART-27's 2027-06-30T14:00:00Z close_time is not an award date. They mark when trading stops on Kalshi. Settlement timing and the official source for each outcome live in the rules text of the specific contract; the example above names the NHL game result as its source. Read that text on kalshi.com before treating any field as an outcome.
The 2026-27 NHL season begins a schedule that runs through April 10, 2027, and the checking routine stays the same from night one:
The season opened on Tuesday, September 29, 2026 with five games, beginning with Florida at Carolina at 5 p.m. ET. Per the NHL's schedule announcement, the regular season runs through April 10, 2027. All five opening-night games were regular-season contests and all five were final by the morning of September 30, 2026.
Florida beat Carolina 1-0 at Lenovo Center in game 2026020001. Gustav Forsling scored the game's only goal and Jacoby Markström recorded the shutout, per the official three-stars data. The night carried extra ceremony because Carolina raised its second Stanley Cup championship banner before puck drop, and the game led off an ESPN tripleheader in the U.S.
In the September 30, 2026 snapshots: one open KXNHL event, KXNHL-27 (Stanley Cup® Finals Winner), holding 32 single-team markets; 28 player markets under KXNHLHART-27; and the game-level series KXNHLGAME, KXNHLSPREAD, and KXNHLTOTAL with five open events each. KXNHLFIRSTGOAL showed zero. Availability changes daily, so verify current markets on kalshi.com.
No. close_time is a trading-deadline field that marks when trading stops on Kalshi. The KXNHL-27 team markets showed 2029-06-30T14:00:00Z and the Hart markets showed 2027-06-30T14:00:00Z, and neither is a settlement or award date. Settlement timing and sources are defined in each contract's rules text on the live market page.
Not financial advice. Prediction-market trading is speculative, and you can lose money. Do your own research.