Knights have Cup experience, but Canes come in historically hot

The Vegas Golden Knights know the bookmakers in their home city have them as underdogs in the Stanley Cup Final.

All that matters to the Golden Knights is what happens on the ice in the best-of-seven finals starting tonight when they take on the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, NC.

“I honestly don’t think I care or it matters to us,” Golden Knights defenseman Shea Theodore said Monday. “We have been confident in our room from the first play-off game until now. Whatever is said, is said. In the end, it doesn’t really matter who picks who. The better team wins in the end.”

The Golden Knights, who are riding a six-game winning streak, and the Hurricanes, who are looking to become the first NHL team to finish 16-1 in the postseason, are both chasing a second Cup title in franchise history.

Carolina – the former Hartford Whalers franchise that became the Hurricanes for the 1997-98 season – won its only Cup in 2006 and had not reached the finals since. Vegas, which won in 2023, is in the finals for the third time in its nine-year history.

Thirteen players on this season’s Vegas roster played on that team from 2022-2023.

“You can draw on your experience knowing what to expect because you’ve done it before and you know what this is going to look like,” said forward Jack Eichel, a member of that Cup-winning team. “But I think every series and every season has its own story, so we’re trying to write that now.”

While Carolina’s run is making more headlines, the Golden Knights have been just as hot since the final few weeks of the regular season. After hiring John Tortorella in a late-season coaching change, Vegas posted a 7-0-1 mark down the stretch to claim first place in the Pacific Division and has marched through opponents with a 19-4-1 record since taking over.

“He’s a guy with a big personality,” defenseman Brayden McNabb said. “So it’s very easy to feel comfortable straight away. He tells you exactly what he wants from you and it’s all black and white.

“He came in and preached the right things, which made us play better and better as a team.”

That said, the Hurricanes are worthy of their favored status. Carolina got to this point by defeating its opponents in the first two rounds – the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers – and then eliminating the Montreal Canadiens in five games in the conference finals, ending with a pair of dominant wins.

The Hurricanes are the first team since the 1976 Montreal Canadiens to win 12 of 13 games to open a playoff run. That Montreal team claimed the Stanley Cup, and the Hurricanes are looking to duplicate that feat.

“We’ve been through so much… now we’re here,” forward Andrei Svechnikov said. “But the job is still not done. This is the biggest phase, we all know that, but now we have one more step.”

Reaching this point was a huge achievement for a Carolina club that reached the Eastern Conference finals for the third time in four years and fourth time in eight seasons but was notorious for falling short.

A key to the Hurricanes continuing their success, aside from the club’s suffocating defensive play, will be embracing the situation. After all, hockey history is full of clubs that managed to reach a new point, but were unable to reload afterwards.

“We’ve been knocking on the door for this for a while. To be at this moment, I think everyone is extremely grateful and super excited,” forward Seth Jarvis said.

“We’re competing for the Stanley Cup with 20 of my best friends. 20 guys I’ve spent a lot of time with. To be here at this moment with this group of guys, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”