Down 4-0 in the Final: the night that built the Hurricanes' banner

It was June 6, and the Stanley Cup Final was getting away from the Carolina Hurricanes.

Vegas had already stolen Game 1 with a late goal. Carolina answered with an overtime win in Game 2. Then came the second period of Game 3. Tomas Hertl scored on a power play. Then Mitch Marner scored. And scored again. And again. Three goals in 6:10, the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history. The scoreboard read 4-0 Vegas, and Carolina's starting goalie, Frederik Andersen, was done for the night.

Tonight the Hurricanes raise a championship banner before they open the season against Florida. To understand what that banner means, you have to start in that hole.

Thirty-nine seconds

Rod Brind'Amour sent Brandon Bussi in to start the third period. Andersen had made 12 saves on 16 shots.

Then the building flipped. Jordan Martinook scored. Taylor Hall scored. Jordan Staal scored. Three goals in 39 seconds, and a 4-0 blowout was suddenly 4-3.

Carolina still needed one more, and it came late. With 1:42 left in regulation, Andrei Svechnikov tied it 4-4 on a power play. A four-goal hole had become a tie game in one period.

It did not have a happy ending that night. Shea Theodore won it for Vegas 5:38 into the second overtime. Bussi made 18 saves on 19 shots in relief, and Carolina walked off down 2-1 in the series.

Here is the part that matters: Carolina did not lose again.

Three straight

Bussi started Game 4 and made 18 saves. Staal scored twice, including the goal that put Carolina back ahead 4-3, and Nikolaj Ehlers closed it with an empty-netter in a 5-3 win.

Game 5 was Svechnikov's night. He scored twice, both on the power play, in a 4-2 win. Across Games 4 and 5, the Golden Knights managed five goals total.

Then Game 6 in Las Vegas on June 14. Hall scored 3:47 into the first period. Jackson Blake doubled it in the second. Ehlers found the empty net. Bussi stopped all 22 shots he faced for his first playoff shutout, and at one stretch of the second and third periods Vegas went nearly 19 minutes without a shot on goal. It was the first time the Golden Knights had been shut out in any of their three trips to the Final.

Over those last three starts, Bussi stopped 63 of 68 shots. The goalie who came in to mop up a 4-0 deficit finished the series without losing a game he started.

The captain and the coach

The run belongs to a lot of people, but two of them tie it back to the franchise's first title.

Staal won the Conn Smythe Trophy at 37, the oldest player ever to win it. He scored six goals in the Final and eight in 19 playoff games, and he became the first player to go 17 years between Stanley Cups, after winning with Pittsburgh in 2009. "This is something I've been going after ever since we got the first one," he said after Game 6.

Brind'Amour captained the 2006 Hurricanes. Twenty years later he won it again from behind the bench, joining a short list of people who have won the Cup with the same franchise as a player and as a coach.

The numbers behind the whole run are hard to believe. Carolina swept Ottawa, swept Philadelphia and beat Montreal in five, entering the Final with one playoff loss, the fewest since the 1975-76 Canadiens. The Hurricanes finished 16-3, the fewest games needed to win the Cup since Edmonton went 16-2 in 1988. Blake led all playoff scorers with 20 points, and Hall had 19.

Why tonight hits different

The opponent tonight is Florida, the team that swept Carolina in the 2023 Eastern Conference Final and won the Cup in 2024 and 2025. Last spring the Panthers did not make the playoffs at all, the first Final since 2019 without a Florida team in it.

Most of the group that won is still here. Twenty of the 22 players who dressed in the 2026 playoffs are back, and the 20 returning players got their rings Sunday in a private ceremony with the Cup. Andersen has moved on to Edmonton, and Bussi is expected to start tonight against Jacob Markstrom. Defenseman Alexander Nikishin is still unsigned as a restricted free agent, and Carolina opens without a key forward who is recovering from shoulder surgery.

Brind'Amour already has his eyes forward. "That's the previous season and we're all running a different race," he said ahead of the opener.

What it means on the board

This story is a reminder of how Carolina wins: by choking off shots. Five goals allowed across Games 4 and 5, 22 shots in the clincher, a nearly 19-minute shot drought for Vegas. When a team suppresses volume like that, the markets that feel it are opposing shots-on-goal props, the opposing goalie's saves line and game totals.

The other side of it is who has the puck. With that forward out, Svechnikov projects on the top line with Sebastian Aho, and he is the player who tied Game 3 and took over Game 5. Role changes like that are what we watch for in shots and points markets early in a season.

Banner nights can be emotional and sloppy, or they can look exactly like last June. Check the NHL recaps after the final horn.

Follow tonight's plays on the NHL board and free picks, catch every graded game in NHL recaps, and brush up on player props.

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