Good evening, everyone. Tonight starts the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Vegas Golden Knights. I cannot say I am excited for hockey to be done for the offseason, but it does bring us one step closer to the New Jersey Devils being back on the ice. So, there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n
The Preview: Carolina Hurricanes vs. Vegas Golden Knights<\/p>\n
Well, I cannot say that I expected Vegas to get this far.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, coaching changes can be underestimated. John Tortorella is a very good coach who has an unfairly negative reputation among media members, and it certainly seems like he has gotten Vegas into shape real quick. In the Conference Finals, they were certainly aided by Colorado\u2019s injury situations, but they are a good team. They underperformed under Cassidy and now look more like what they were expected to be coming into this season.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights have gotten excellent scoring from their top guys these playoffs. Mitch Marner has 21 points in 16 games. Jack Eichel sits at 18. Both Pavel Dorofeyev and Brett Howden have 10 goals. Shea Theodoore has been a two-way monster with 11 points while playing great defense. What we are seeing in Vegas is a bunch of guys in the middle or latter stages of their prime years firing on all cylinders under a fresh coach. Through 16 games played, they have been outshot to some extent, but their shooting percentage is through the roof at over 13 percent.<\/p>\n
The big question is whether they can keep that up against the Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
Freddie Andersen is currently sporting a 1.41 goals against average with a .931 save percentage. The Hurricanes are only allowing a bit over 22 shots against per game. Taylor Hall leads them with 16 points, followed by Jackson Blake at 15. They are the only two players on the Hurricanes to have over a point per game these playoffs, though they have gotten contributions from the first to fourth lines and first to third pairings. Additionally, K\u2019Andre Miller has seen some spotlight with outstanding on-ice results as he has really come into his own as a defenseman in Carolina. This series is a battle of two outstanding coaches who have inspired their teams to reach new heights. Who will prevail: the team that has brutally stifled all three of their opponents so far, or the team shooting at ridiculously high rates?<\/p>\n
Ice Time Leaders (ATOI, Top Three Each Team)<\/p>\n
Former Devils in the Finals<\/p>\n
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With that, thank you for reading! Comment away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good evening, everyone. Tonight starts the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Vegas Golden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5109],"tags":[201,5,576,151,5185,5184,4,43041,26513],"class_list":["post-589726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-jersey-devils","tag-devils","tag-hockey","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-jersey-devils","tag-newjersey","tag-newjerseydevils","tag-nhl","tag-non-devils-issues","tag-views-analysis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116683108765861651","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}