July 23, 2026
By Sam Weiger
The opening weekend of playoffs is a slate filled with Championship Weekend contenders, and it’s time to determine the contenders from the pretenders. Unlike past years, all four third seeds look like dangerous underdogs that could spice up the final two weekends of the postseason.
San Diego Growlers at Carolina Flyers
Friday, July 24 - 7:30 PM/ET - Watch link
Does the South Division's playoff opener deliver another thriller? The division has made a name for itself this season with six one-goal finishes, and five of those six featured either San Diego or Carolina.
But given how these two teams have been trending, is there any real reason to think San Diego keeps this one competitive? Over their last nine outings, San Diego is 5-4, with their lone quality win coming against a healthy Colorado squad. Carolina, meanwhile, is riding a seven-game win streak that includes three statement victories (two over Atlanta, one over Austin).
While San Diego has been having trouble putting away some of the league's weaker opponents, the Flyers have developed an All-Star roster on both ends of the disc. Their O-line alone arguably features six All-UFA caliber players: Zeke Thoreson, Tobias Brooks, Allan Laviolette, Jacob Louie, Grayson Sanner, and Jacob Fairfax.
Thoreson has emerged as one of the UFA's most valuable assets, backed by a Tot-aEC rating of 6.8, second-best in the league. Brooks sits sixth leaguewide in Thrower-aEC, Fairfax ranks fourth in Receiver-aEC, Louie is the league’s only player with 400-plus completions at a completion rate above 98 percent, Sanner sits sixth in goals scored, and Laviolette, last year's league leader in assists, just posted his season-best performance in his return from injury.
The trouble doesn't end there for the Growlers, either. They'll also have to navigate around Defensive Player of the Year candidate Cooper Williams, a reinvigorated Drew Swanson and Matt Tucker both playing like their old elite selves again, and the highly gifted Christian Belus.
So how does San Diego keep pace?
They're unquestionably a deep team in their own right, but on paper, they simply haven't shown the star power Carolina brings. Khalif El-Salaam and Max Gibson have played well alongside a decent supporting cast, nowhere near the talent level Carolina has assembled.
The franchise's centerpiece, Travis Dunn, has clearly regressed this year. He closed out the regular season with his lowest assist, goal, plus/minus, and point totals since 2015. Matt Miller has similarly seen his involvement drop off a bit, while Brandon Van Deusen and Steven Milardovich haven't been able to recapture the elite level they've shown in prior seasons.
That leaves the door open for high-upside players like Jonathan Lyle, KJ Koo, and Max Combs to provide the lift their team needs.
Lyle stands out as the most compelling case at the moment. After starting the season slowly, much like he did last year, he's rediscovered his scoring touch over the past two games. Both came against Las Vegas, but his production still climbed significantly. Koo's scoring has been inconsistent, though his peaks have translated into huge outputs for the Growlers. Combs has proven to be the most versatile of this group, delivering key offensive and defensive plays in several of his team's biggest matchups this season, including against Atlanta and Austin.
One Big Number:
11 - Carolina ranks top five leaguewide in 11 major categories: offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency, Tot-aEC, blocks, goals, goal differential, turnovers committed, completion percentage, hold rate, break percentage, and red zone conversion rate.
93.54 - San Diego has the third-lowest completion rate of any playoff team, 93.54 percent.
DC Breeze at New York Empire
Saturday, July 25 - 2:00 PM/ET - Free on YouTube
For the fourth time in five postseasons, the league’s fiercest rivalry is back: DC and New York collide in the most anticipated first-round matchup of the weekend.
New York finally has its shot at redemption for arguably the most embarrassing playoff defeat in franchise history, a 23-12 blowout loss 364 days ago in last year’s opening round.
Given the offense the Empire have been running lately, don’t expect them to get held to 12 goals again.
Since the start of July, New York has been putting up 31.5 goals per game on average, a notable jump, though it’s come against a stretch of two Philly games, one Chicago game, and one Toronto game. Philly and Chicago have struggled defensively, but Toronto actually looked solid on D heading into their matchup with New York. Unfortunately for the Rush, that’s exactly when Daan De Marrée chose to have his breakout performance and swing the game New York’s way.
That Toronto game, De Marrée’s most recent outing, was his best outing of the season. He finished with season highs across assists (eight), plus/minus (+10), total yards (654), receiving yards (422), hockey assists (four), and points played (25). The question now is whether that game was a preview of what’s coming against a DC defense that, on paper, looks like exactly the kind of unit he could shred.
DC’s defense had no answer for a similarly explosive receiver last week in Will Selfridge, who torched them for four goals and a game-high 432 receiving yards. While it’s true that DC had nothing to play for in that Week 13 crossover game, their defensive struggles run deeper than one meaningless matchup.
Since the start of June, they’ve given up 25.33 goals per game to playoff-caliber competition (Atlanta, Carolina, and Boston). What’s most alarming isn’t just that this stretch has been their worst against strong opponents, it’s that the problem isn’t new. DC has struggled to contain playoff-level offenses all season.
Heading into the year, this outcome was already on people's radar. The Breeze lost a handful of core D-line contributors in Alexandre Fall, Moussa Dia, David Bloodgood, Rhys Bergeron, and others. Compounding that, the absences of Rowan McDonnell and Tyler Monroe pushed defensive standouts AJ Merriman and Miles Grovic over to the O-line to fill the gap. Making matters worse, regulars Jasper Tom and Charlie McCutcheon have sat out more games than anticipated.
Tom, McCutcheon, and fellow D-liners Luke Rehfuss and Kevin Healey are all still inactive for this game, so that's worth watching closely. If DC trots out a D-line resembling what we've seen the past few weeks, it opens the door for New York to exploit a serious mismatch.
Beyond De Marrée, keep an eye on Jack "Playoff Jack" Williams, who's put up 7.33 total scores and 509 total yards per game across his last three playoff openers. He's given DC fits in the postseason for years, and even though his overall production has trended down, his knack for showing up in elimination games can't be dismissed.
A less certain but intriguing wildcard is Alex Davis. His workload has been climbing lately, he's logged more points over the past two weeks than at any other point this season. It came against Philly, so take it with a grain of salt, but Davis just turned in his best game of the year by a wide margin Davis set season-highs across goals, receiving yards, hockey assists, completions, assists, Tot-aEC, Thrower-aEC, Receiver-aEC, Lag Contribution, huck receptions, and player impact all in a single outing. That’s something you don’t see often.
One Big Number:
94.38 - New York's red zone conversion rate over their last five games is 94.38 percent, and now they're set to face a DC red zone defense that's been middling at best.
48.1 - DC’s defensive efficiency sits at 48.1 percent, second-lowest among all playoff teams.
Salt Lake Shred at Seattle Cascades
Saturday, July 25 - 8:00 PM/ET - Watch link
One of the biggest question marks this weekend is the Salt Lake Shred, who despite finishing three games back of Seattle in the standings remain a massive threat to the Cascades.
Seattle swept the season series against Salt Lake, but both contests came down to a single goal. What looked like a matchup Salt Lake would handle has instead become a tightly contested divisional battle that's nearly impossible to call.
That tightness stems from a two-way shift: Salt Lake has underperformed relative to expectations, while Seattle has exceeded them. For the Cascades, standout individual play on both sides of the disc, offense and defense alike, has reshaped the roster's identity.
Spencer Lofink has easily been Seattle's most impactful difference-maker this season, and given how he's performed against Salt Lake specifically, the Cascades will lean on him to keep riding this hot streak. The sixth-year veteran shook off a somewhat quiet start to the year, closing out his final seven regular-season games with a plus/minus per game of +5.29 and 508.57 total yards per game.
Against Salt Lake this year, he's putting up 5.5 assists per game on average, and his latest outing versus the Shred stands as his best performance of the 2026 season: 65 completions (season-high), six assists (season-high), a +7 plus/minus (tied for season-high), 422 throwing yards (season-high), 238 receiving yards (season-high), and three hucks (season-high).
Seattle's other key contributor, Ricky McLeod, hasn't produced the same eye-catching numbers against the Shred, but he's been a huge boost to the defense overall and has been notieceable against strong opponents this year like Oakland, Austin, and Toronto. He surprisingly finished with just one block in his last couple of games, both against Oregon, so I’m interested to see if McLeod wakes up against the Shred.
One of Salt Lake’s biggest defensive contributors since the team’s inception in 2022, Kyle Weinberg, is set to suit up for just the second time this season. Whether or not his impact stands out on the stat sheet, he serves as a captain-like figure for this defense, and having his veteran presence on the field should be a real boost for a Shred D-line currently ranked among the bottom four in defensive efficiency among the 12 playoff teams. His 125 career playoff defensive points played remain the most by any player in franchise history.
Come playoff time, defenses across the board are expected to tighten up as the stakes rise, so the real question is which of these two middle-of-the-pack offenses can find more efficiency. Salt Lake, whose offense has genuinely disappointed this year, lines up evenly against Seattle in many categories. Salt Lake owns a 93.74 completion percentage against Seattle’s 93.5, and the Shred average 17.58 turns per game compared to Seattle’s 18.42. The Cascades’ O-line conversion rate sits at 55.48 percent versus Salt Lake’s 55.10 percent, while Salt Lake’s score differential (goals scored minus goals allowed) is 1.9 against Seattle’s 1.8.
Salt Lake's offense carries the higher ceiling between the two teams, but that ceiling has barely shown itself all season. The central question is what head coach Bryce Merrill can do to reduce his team's turnovers. He tried several creative wrinkles in the season finale, from calling earlier timeouts to shuffling player usage. None of it seemed to move the needle, though, so I'm curious to see Merrill's approach in this one given that he still hasn't cracked the code for this O-line.
One option is for Merrill to build the playmaking around Jordan Kerr. Kerr and Chad Yorgason have far outpaced everyone else as the team's top handler playmakers, combining for 94 assists this year. But given Yorgason's rough outing against Oakland last week—three costly early errors against the Spiders, closing with a completion rate of 85.71—I wouldn't be surprised if Merrill decides to lean on Kerr more.
Also worth watching are young players Grayson Rettberg and Oscar Brown, who made their presence felt on the O-line against Oakland last week. It was the biggest game of their careers to date, and it's these kinds of unexpected contributions, from pieces Salt Lake lacked in their earlier matchups with Seattle this season, that could finally get them over the hump in a game this even.
Weather looks good in Seattle on Saturday night, so conditions shouldn’t be too much of a factor, which should boost a Salt Lake team that has struggled with windy conditions in the past. Anything that can mitigate turnovers will work in their favor, as they are historically the less turnover-prone teams out of the two.
One Big Number:
51.5 - Seattle’s team offensive efficiency is 51.2 percent, the lowest of any playoff team.
5 - Kerr carved up Seattle's shaky huck defense in their Week 11 clash, connecting on all five of his huck attempts.
Indianapolis AlleyCats at Madison Radicals
Sunday, July 26 - 6:00 PM/ET - Watch link
Apparently four meetings weren't enough for this historic rivalry. Indy and Madison will square off for a fifth time this year, and no other two teams will cross paths more often in 2026, giving this matchup the flavor of an Atlanta-Carolina showdown.
Sure, Madison holds the edge in this year's series, but the numbers don't tell the whole story. The 'Cats were still figuring things out in their new-look form during the opener. The second meeting was an absolute toss-up that could've broken either way, and the third saw Indy missing a large portion of their key players.
It was the fourth matchup that truly revealed what the Indy AlleyCats are capable of, as they embarrassed the Radicals at Breese Stevens Field. Lately, though, neither side has shown much consistency, which makes this one tough to call.
The only playoff-team wins for either the Radicals or the AlleyCats have come against each other, so neither has really proven itself elsewhere. What we can take from their meetings this year is that Indy tends to control its own destiny in these games, especially looking at the last three meetings.
In the second matchup, Elliot Hawkins undercut his own team with a string of costly throwaways. In the third, the 'Cats simply couldn't keep pace without their stars available. And in the fourth, the whole roster clicked and they walked away with a blowout win.
Unfortunately for the 'Cats, several of their most impactful players appear set to sit this one out. Will Wettengel, Cam Brock, and Sofiène Bontemps are the biggest names currently listed as inactive, and while the list of key absences isn't as long as it was in Week 10, losing these three could be just enough to tip the odds toward Madison.
Wettengel, who is expected to sit out Sunday's game with a leg injury, has been one of Indy's top players all season. He's clearly been Indy's most impactful two-way player by a wide margin, so his absence costs the 'Cats their most versatile piece. It'll be felt especially hard on Indy's inconsistent D-line offense, which he's had one of the biggest hands in shaping all year. In games he's missed, the 'Cats have dropped all three matchups against playoff-caliber opponents: Minnesota, Madison, and Toronto.
His absence would make Xavier Payne’s contributions on the D-line even more significant; the star veteran hasn’t quite been the QB playmaker that Indy was hoping for, so will his breakout game finally come with D-line receivers Kai Creed, James Pollard and Jason Kempe at his disposal?
The D-line offense will likely need to step up with Brock and Bontemps, two of Indy’s best O-line receivers, expected to miss this game. These two absences would really hurt Hawkins, who has been very inconsistent this year and could really use elite cutters to lean on in a pressure game like this.
Of all active players on both sides, Hawkins is the main player to watch.
His team's results track almost perfectly with his individual performances, underscoring just how much he impacts the outcome. In Hawkins' three worst games, where he posted a plus/minus per game of just +1, Indy lost every time. In his other six games, where he averaged a plus/minus of 9.83 per game, his team went unbeaten. It's very difficult to find another player in the league whose individual output lines up this closely with his team's record.
The Radicals might not have a singular star with that kind of impact, but they’ve had a trio functioning as the Hawkins-like engine of their team all season: Nico Ranabhat, Pieran Robert, and Gabe Vordick. Ranabhat has been the assist-making QB1, Robert has been the primary red zone target, and Vordick has anchored things as the other QB1. All three have been remarkably steady this year, and they’ll be pivotal in a matchup where the Radicals could try to outscore a shorthanded ‘Cats offense while exploiting a defense that’s been wobbly of late.
Indy’s defense gave up 26.5 goals per game, a 69.5 percent hold rate, a 67.5 percent huck rate, and 11.5 hucks per game during their Week 13 doubleheader against two non-playoff teams. That weak huck defense could be an opening for Eric Sjostrom, who shined in his playoff debut a year ago, to emerge as a surprise x-factor.
One Big Number:
256.36 - Brock and Bontemps sit second and third in receiving yards per game, combining for 256.36 yards per game.
91.67 - Sjostrom has completed 91.67 of his nine huck attempts over his last three games. He leads the team with 15 hucks this season.
