The 1993–94 NHL season was the 77th regular season of the National Hockey League. The league expanded to 26 teams with the addition of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Florida Panthers. The New York Rangers defeated the Vancouver Canucks in seven games to become the Stanley Cup champions. It was the Rangers' fourth championship overall, and their first in 54 seasons, since 1939–40.

The spectacular play of Dominik Hasek of the Buffalo Sabres ushered in a new era of goaltending dominance in the NHL. Only three teams reached the 300-goal plateau, and only one team, the Detroit Red Wings, averaged more than four goals scored per game.^[1] Goaltenders combined for 99 shutouts during the regular season,^[2] a mark that broke the all-time regular-season record of 85 set in 1974–75.^[3]

For this season, the names of the conferences were changed from Campbell and Wales to Western and Eastern respectively, and the divisions' names were changed from Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe to Northeast, Atlantic, Central, and Pacific respectively.^[4] Each division had changes. The Northeast Division would welcome the Pittsburgh Penguins, previously from the Patrick Division. The Atlantic Division would welcome the newcomer Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning, previously from the Norris Division. The Central Division would welcome the Winnipeg Jets, previously from the Smythe Division. The Pacific Division would welcome the newcomer Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. New league commissioner Gary Bettman, who had previously worked in the National Basketball Association (NBA), thought the old names could be confusing to non-traditional fans and believed that a change to geographically named divisions, as used in the NBA and most other North American professional sports, would be more easily understandable to new fans.

In addition, the playoff format was changed to a conference based seeding over division specific brackets: the division winners were seeded one-two by order of point finish, then the top six remaining teams in the conference were seeded three through eight.^[4][5] However, unlike the NBA, the NHL matched the highest-seeded winners against the lowest-seeded winners in the second round. In order to reduce the number of long trips to and from the West Coast, whenever a Central Division team played a Pacific Division team in the playoffs, the format was 2–3–2 rather than the traditional 2–2–1–1–1, a format that was only used for the 1993–94 season.

The Panthers and Mighty Ducks set new records for first-year expansion teams. Both teams finished with 33 wins, surpassing the 31 wins of the Philadelphia Flyers and Los Angeles Kings in 1967–68. That mark would not be topped by another expansion team until the Vegas Golden Knights notched their 34th win in their inaugural season on February 1, 2018, finishing with 43.^[6] The Panthers also set a high-water mark in points, with 83 points, surpassing the previous record set by the Flyers' 73 points in 1967–68. The Golden Knights would eventually shatter this inaugural expansion team record by 26 points notching a total of 109 points in 2017–18.

The NHL awards presentation took place on June 16, 1994.

As a part of the 1992 strike settlement, the NHL and Bruce McNall's Multivision Marketing and Public Relations Co. organized 26 regular season games in cities without a franchise as a litmus test for future expansion.

The Stars played a neutral-site game in their previous market of Minnesota at the Target Center in Minneapolis, where they were greeted enthusiastically. The Minnesota North Stars' tradition of playing on New Year's Eve and holding a post-game skate on the ice was also continued with a game between the Flyers and Bruins.

The Lightning vs. Red Wings contest in Minneapolis was scheduled for Martin Luther King Day, a Monday, with an afternoon face-off at 2:05 PM. However, due to an error on the NHL's part, the Lightning believed themselves to be playing at 7:35 PM, an error that was only discovered two weeks prior to the game by reporters. The Lightning ended up playing an 8:05 PM game in Winnipeg, flying back to the U.S., and playing again 18 hours later in Minneapolis.

The Panthers, in the midst of a playoff race, played a March "home" game against the Maple Leafs 30 miles from Toronto, at Hamilton.

• List of Stanley Cup champions
• 1993 NHL Entry Draft
• 1993 NHL Expansion Draft
• 1993 NHL Supplemental Draft
• 1993-94 NHL Transactions
• 45th National Hockey League All-Star Game
• National Hockey League All-Star Game
• NHL All-Rookie Team
• Ice hockey at the 1994 Winter Olympics
• 1993 in sports
• 1994 in sports