Vegas and Carolina rugged and rolling as they open a Stanley Cup Final nearly a decade in the making

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Rod Brind'Amour knows the exact moment he realized the Carolina Hurricanes could be Stanley Cup contenders.

“Eight years ago,” he said. That was when Brind'Amour took over as coach, beginning a journey of making the playoffs every year and falling short of the final each time until now.

The Vegas Golden Knights were born nine years ago, but from the time they pillaged the rest of the NHL in the expansion draft through this spring, they have set championship expectations. They made the final in their inaugural season and won it all in 2023. Their third visit to the Cup Final is perhaps their most surprising.

This Vegas-Carolina final is almost a decade in the making for a pair of teams in non-traditional markets that have become powerhouses. The collision course brought them to this moment, a best-of-seven series that begins with Game 1 on Tuesday night.

“It’s for all the marbles,” Golden Knights forward Cole Smith said. “Just the way they play, they play a really fast game. So do we. It's going to be a really great series.”

Brind'Amour has been a Carolina constant

The Hurricanes won their only Stanley Cup championship in 2006, when Brind'Amour was their captain. He played 9 1/2 seasons for them and spent seven more as an assistant before getting named coach in 2018. He has been a part of 98 of Carolina's 100 playoff victories since the franchise formerly known as the Whalers moved from Hartford in '97.

"Roddy’s been at the helm of it the whole time and just establishing the culture that we do have here,” said defenseman Jaccob Slavin, now in his 11th season with the team. “It’s been building and building and we’ve been close and knocking at the door. I think we finally just have the right personnel, the right commitment, the right buy-in because our game really hasn’t changed.”

Slavin, captain Jordan Staal, grinder Jordan Martinook and center Sebastian Aho have been together since the time Brind'Amour got promoted, and wingers Andrei Svechnikov and Seth Jarvis and goaltender Frederik Andersen got added the well-established core along the way. The Hurricanes won at least one series every year but had never strung together three in a row.

“We’ve been trying really hard for eight years, and it’s not anybody’s fault," Martinook said. "It’s just we’ve fallen short.”

What has been different for the Hurricanes

Logan Stankoven, acquired at the trade deadline last year when Mikko Rantanen was sent to Dallas six weeks after Carolina got him from Colorado, has thrived at center on the second line between Taylor Hall and Jackson Blake. Stankoven leads the team with nine goals.

Hall, who came from Chicago in that initial three-way trade with Rantanen, tops the Hurricanes with 16 points. Nikolaj Ehlers, signed last summer as a free agent, had a monster Game 2 of the East final after they lost the series opener, including scoring the overtime winner.

“I don’t think I’ve done anything special to get this group (here),” Ehlers said. “This group was ready for it."

Carolina is 12-1 this playoffs, the fewest losses to get to the final since 1983. Brind'Amour feels like this is where his team has belonged for a long time but still has unfinished business.

“I don’t think we have broken through,” Brind'Amour said. “You’ve got to win. I know everyone makes a lot about getting this far, but nobody’s going to remember who comes in second.”

The Golden Knights were winners from the start

Vegas came in second during its inaugural season when no one expected the expansion team to be any good. The Golden Knights went all the way to the final before losing to Washington in five games.

“Set the tone right away,” said center William Karlsson, one of the three original so-called “Misfits” who are still around from the beginning. “That came out of nowhere.”

First general manager George McPhee plucking Karlsson, defensemen Shea Theodore and Brayden McNabb and winger Reilly Smith — back after a year and a half absence — from other teams put Vegas in position to succeed. Smart selections in the draft, free agent signings and trades by McPhee and now-GM Kelly McCrimmon established a standard of winning at all costs.

“It’s what you want to be as an athlete," McNabb said. "You want to be on a team that does that.”

In came Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Ivan Barbashev and Alex Pietrangelo, and the Knights won the Cup in their sixth season. They’ve only missed the playoffs once.

What has been different for the Golden Knights

Pietrangelo's career-ending injury opened space to deal for Mitch Marner on June 30. Marner leads all scorers in the playoffs with 21 points, succeeding at a time of year that he never did in nearly a decade with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“I think our team is deeper and a better team than what he had played on in Toronto,” McCrimmon said. “Not that Toronto didn’t have real good teams, but you have to have that depth throughout your roster because to go through three rounds or ultimately, hopefully, four rounds, everybody’s got to take their turn.”

Pavel Dorofeyev has been a breakout star on that front, and he and teammate Brett Howden are tied for the most postseason goals with 10 apiece. Karlsson returned in the second round after missing the previous six months with an undisclosed injury.

Goaltender Carter Hart, a controversial signing last fall after he and four other Hockey Canada junior players were acquitted of sexual assault, has rounded into form. Hart stopped 118 of 125 shots in a West final sweep of Colorado.

And, most notably, Vegas has won 19 of 24 games since McCrimmon fired coach Bruce Cassidy in late March and hired John Tortorella, whom he had never met or spoken with before.

“We asked ourselves, ‘Who can come in and give us that kind of a bump?'" McCrimmon said. “John was the guy that we really felt strongly could do that.”

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