Stanley Cup playoffs primer: What to know for each first-round series

This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Get up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here .

The NHL playoffs open Saturday afternoon with the Ottawa Senators visiting the Carolina Hurricanes, while the Edmonton Oilers and the Montreal Canadiens are also in the running to become the first Canadian team to hoist the Stanley Cup sincethe Habs in 1993.

Here's a quick look at the three first-round series involving a Canadian club, plus a bit on each of the five all-U.S. matchups.

Ottawa vs. Carolina (starts Saturday at 3 p.m. ET)

As the lower of the two Eastern Conference wild cards, the Senators are obviously clear underdogs against the top-seeded Hurricanes, who won the Metropolitan Division in a landslide and finished with the second-best record in the league, behind Colorado.

But Ottawa has been one of the NHL's top teams since March 1, going 15-5-3 while Carolina was 15-7-1. Also, the betting markets suggest this series could be closer than it looks, with the current series odds implying the 'Canes have around a 60 per cent chance of taking it. By comparison, Western top seed Colorado's implied odds of winning its opening-round series are around 80 per cent.

To upset high-scoring Carolina, the Sens will need up-and-down goalie Linus Ullmark to be the best version of himself. The 2023 Vezina Trophy winner struggled over the first three months of the season before taking a 16-game leave of absence for mental-health reasons, and Ottawa sank to last place in the East in mid-January. But, since returning at the end of that month, Ullmark is 14-4-3 with a fantastic 2.30 goals-against average, helping his team overcome a 10-point deficit to reach the playoffs.

Montreal