After a wild six weeks of action, we have arrived at an incredible Stanley Cup Final.
The Carolina Hurricanes emerged from the Eastern Conference; the consensus favourite heading into the fray made light work of the Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers, and Montreal Canadiens in comprehensive fashion.
Remarkably, the Hurricanes have only lost one game since April 13 and now sit just four wins away from their second championship.
Standing in their path is a veteran-led Vegas Golden Knights team that has caught absolute fire under new head coach John Tortorella. The up-and-down Vegas team we watched during the regular season is no longer; so much so that the Golden Knights dispatched the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche in a bloodbath of a third-round sweep.
It’s about as good a Stanley Cup Final as you can hope for. Let’s preview it and send this season off in proper form.
Vegas Golden Knights vs. Carolina Hurricanes
What to know: This is simply a different Golden Knights team than the regular-season version. In fact, it looks a lot like the team that won it all in 2023. A lethal forecheck, a complete closure of the neutral zone, and some high-end playmaking at the top of the lineup has turned the Golden Knights into a Goliath under Tortorella.
This defensive improvement (coupled with the emergence of Carter Hart in net) is why Vegas has reached their third Stanley Cup Final in nine years. They’ll face another elite defensive team in the form of Carolina, a similarly great forechecking team but one that likes to play defence through offence.
The Hurricanes have become synonymous with dominant puck possession and outshooting teams by wild margins, drastically limiting the opposition’s chances by taking away their ability to play with the puck.
The Vegas advantage: The most illuminating statistic of the 2025-26 Stanley Cup Playoffs has been the utter dominance of the Golden Knights’ penalty kill. In three rounds, Vegas has conceded five power-play goals, but has scored four times while shorthanded, giving them a -1 goal differential while on the penalty kill over the duration of the playoffs. Given the personnel (two high-quality defensive pairings, with players like Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, and Nic Dowd up front), it feels sustainable.
What’s more, Carolina’s power play has looked broken of late. Vegas and Carolina finished the regular season third and fourth respectively in power-play scoring (9.6 goals per 60 minutes for the Golden Knights; 9.1 goals per 60 minutes for the Hurricanes), but Carolina has been unable to find anything since the postseason started. In the three rounds against Ottawa, Philadelphia, and Montreal, Carolina averaged just 4.2 goals per 60 minutes played (or, dead last by regular season standards). If Vegas can play with reasonable discipline in this series, there’s a good chance Vegas can win the special teams’ minutes.
When Vegas is on the power play, keep an eye on Mark Stone and Pavel Dorofeyev – the aforementioned Marner and Eichel are fantastic at playmaking for these finishers, and the duo has already combined for eight power-play goals.
The Carolina advantage: Carolina is going to have the puck most of the time at even strength – even in a series where the quality of competition has ratcheted up as much as it has here.
Getting out of the Eastern Conference, Carolina maintained a staggering 61 per cent expected goal share, spending an outsized amount of time holding the offensive zone and keeping opposing defences under immense pressure. Carolina’s offence comes through intense volume rather than one-off scoring chances, and it pays dividends on both sides of the ice.
Note their regular-season shot profiles below (via HockeyViz); it’s not just puck dominance, it’s also control of the dangerous scoring areas between the circles and in front of the net. Even a great team like Vegas is going to struggle to find space in this series:
Player to watch: Last summer, the Carolina Hurricanes engineered a huge sign-and-trade deal with then-New York Rangers defenceman K’Andre Miller, giving him a $60-million contract and the expectations of anchoring a top-four pairing behind Jaccob Slavin.
So far, so very good for Miller – the Hurricanes are outscoring opponents in the playoffs by a whopping 13-goal margin (16-3) with Miller deployed at even strength, playing primarily with Sean Walker. That’s the best number of any playoff skater.
Rod Brind’Amour demands an up-tempo transition game that requires defencemen to be capable puck carriers and distributors, and Miller has carried a lot of that burden for the Carolina second pair.
Pick: I buy this Vegas team is different, and unquestionably the most difficult foe this Hurricanes team has faced on their march to the Stanley Cup. But Carolina was my Stanley Cup pick heading in, and I think this is the year their puck dominance paves a path to the title. Hurricanes in a seven-game nail-biter!
Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, HockeyViz, Hockey Reference
