The Carolina Hurricanes ended a 20-year Stanley Cup drought on Sunday in Las Vegas with a 3–0 win over the Vegas Golden Knights.
Carolina last won the title in 2006 during the team’s eighth season in North Carolina, eight years after a 1997 move from Hartford. Before Sunday, the Hurricanes endured seven consecutive years of playoff heartbreak, which included three Eastern Conference finals losses and five early exits.
“That’s a lot of years,” Hurricanes center Jordan Staal told ESPN afterward. “It’s amazing. This is something I’ve been going after ever since we got the first one.”
Staal, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy for the playoff MVP, entered the league a year after the Hurricanes won in 2006. He played six seasons for the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he won a Stanley Cup in 2009, before being traded to the Hurricanes in 2012.
“You want to win it again and again and again. What a feeling, what a battle,” Staal said. “The boys were grinding today, my goodness. So many individual efforts just to keep the puck out of our net. It was an amazing ride. I’m just so proud of these guys.”
Carolina took the lead in the first four minutes of Game 6 when Taylor Hall scored on a wrist shot, assisted by Jaccob Slavin and Jackson Blake. It marked Hall’s seventh goal of the playoffs, a career high for the Calgary native.
“Your mind wanders the last couple of days and [you] wonder what it may be like out here, and it’s better than I could have expected,” Hall told SportsNet.
Blake made it 2–0 during the second period on a snapshot, assisted by Logan Stankoven. It gave Blake seven goals for the postseason, also a career high, in his second trip to the playoffs.
Nikolaj Ehlers sealed the win late in the third period with a snapshot goal unassisted. Ehlers made it a career-high eight goals in the playoffs with the Cup-sealing score.
Hurricanes goalie Brandon Bussi delivered his first career postseason shutout with 22 saves in the process. Bussi, in his rookie season, finished with a 31–6–2 record and a 2.47 goals-against average.
He stepped up in the playoffs with a 3–1 record amid a 1.60 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage. Bussi tallied all three of his wins during the Stanley Cup Final, and his only loss came in a 5–4 overtime defeat.
“When I was younger, I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame. I honestly can’t even remember if you’re allowed to touch the Cup or not, but I said I’m not touching it,” Bussi said via ESPN. “You work so hard for it. You never know if the opportunity’s going to come. And I’m glad it did with this group.”
Amid all the big individual performances in Game 6, Staal took home the MVP for his strong postseason overall. He became the oldest-ever NHL player to win it.
For Hurricanes head coach Rob Brind’Amour, Sunday’s win marked a full-circle moment. He served as the team captain when the Hurricanes last won the Stanley Cup, before he joined the coaching staff in 2011. Brind’Amour became head coach in 2019 and has led the Hurricanes to the playoffs every season since taking the job.
“It’s just as awesome,” Brind’Amour told reporters. “But as a player, it was a little different. I worked and dreamt of winning the Cup my whole life, so that was like a piano came off my back. This time around, I wanted it for the group.”
Brind’Amour had been through the lean years before that, when the Hurricanes made the playoffs only once between 2006 and 2019. Staal had been with Brind’Amour for six of those lean years before the Hurricanes became a playoff regular again.
“The eight years we’ve been doing this with Roddy, it’s the game we’ve built. It doesn’t ever change. It’s just the same thing over and over again. It doesn’t matter what the score is, up, down, left or right.” Staal told reporters before Game 6. “We’re just going to show up, and we’re going to work and do the things that we do. And it’s going to give us the best chance to win.”
