The Carolina Hurricanes are going back to the Stanley Cup Final.
A 6-1 win over the Montreal Canadiens in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Final at Lenovo Center on Friday put them there, sealing a 4-1 series victory and ending a 20-year wait for another shot at the title. The last time Carolina were at this stage was 2006. They beat Edmonton in seven games to lift the Cup. Two decades, several complete roster rebuilds, and four head coaches later, this group has arrived somewhere none of its predecessors could reach: the Final with a 12-1 playoff record. No team in the history of the modern NHL had reached the Stanley Cup Final while losing only one game in the first three rounds.
Game 5 was not close. The Canadiens had already given everything they had in a 4-0 shutout in Game 4. They arrived at Lenovo Center needing a result they were never likely to get. Robinson, Stankoven, Hall, and Jarvis all scored for Carolina. Cole Caufield converted a power-play goal for Montreal, the lone answer in a game decided long before the final horn.
The architect of Carolina’s entire postseason has been Frederik Andersen. The 36-year-old goalkeeper has produced a run of performances that belongs alongside any in recent playoff history. His save percentage for the postseason stands at .928, the best of any goaltender with more than five games played. He leads the league with three shutouts. Friday’s win moved him to 12-1 for the postseason. Along the way he passed Cam Ward’s franchise record of four career playoff shutouts, taking his own total to five.
One number captures what Andersen has done better than any other. Across 42 long-range shots faced in these playoffs, he has allowed zero goals. A 1.000 save percentage from distance, 42 saves from 42 attempts. It is the kind of number that belongs in a discussion about defining goaltending performances in the sport.
Now comes the hardest part.
Carolina will face the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2026 Stanley Cup Final. Vegas swept the Colorado Avalanche 4-0 in the Western Conference Final, arriving from the opposite side of the bracket with their own argument for being the best team in the league this spring. Both franchises have built through analytics and depth rather than around a single franchise player. Both arrived here from genuinely dominant playoff runs.
For Carolina, the journey has been longer and harder than the 12-1 record suggests. Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov, both among the assists on Friday night, were either absent or too young to contribute in 2006. Seth Jarvis and Logan Stankoven, two of the goals against the Canadiens, are products of the drafting cycles that followed a decade of near-misses. The team that takes the ice in the Stanley Cup Final is, in almost every meaningful sense, a different franchise from the one that won it.
For the Canadiens, Friday brought the end of a run that exceeded most expectations. They arrived in the ECF as the team almost nobody picked to get this far. Cole Caufield, scoring from the power play with Lane Hutson providing the assist, leads Montreal in playoff points. The foundation is there for a team that has accelerated a rebuild ahead of schedule. This elimination hurts, but the Canadiens leave the spring with something to build on.
The 2026 Stanley Cup Final gets underway in the coming days.
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