Hurricanes, Golden Knights Appear Destined for Stanley Cup Final Clash

The Vegas Golden Knights have already punched their ticket to the Stanley Cup Final.

It is just a matter of time before the Carolina Hurricanes do the same.

The Hurricanes are one win away from dispatching the overmatched Montreal Canadiens and advancing to the championship round for the first time in 20 years.

Oh sure, the Canadiens may prolong the series with a victory in Friday’s Game 5, in Raleigh, N.C., but anybody wanting to bet on the long odds that Montreal can erase its 3-1 deficit in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals would be a fool parting with their money.

After serving up a dud in the series opener, a 6-2 Montreal victory, the Hurricanes have been the overwhelming better team, and hit another gear in the latest win.

Meanwhile, the Canadiens have managed only 43 shots on goal over the past three games, the exact same Carolina fired in the 4-0 victory on Wednesday.

The Canadiens have taken a big step forward this season, but the Hurricanes have shown the young Montreal squad must make a few more leaps to become legitimate Cup contenders.

Which means it is time to gear up for a showdown between the Eastern Conference’s regular-season champs and a Vegas squad that caught fire down the stretch thanks to a coaching change and provided the surprise of the playoffs to reach the final.

Here are some other thoughts as the Stanley Cup chase heads to the championship round.

As much as the injuries cost the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference finals, the Vegas Golden Knights were full marks for sweeping the league’s regular-season champions.

The Golden Knights are not easy to like with coach John Tortorella and his churlish ways, the cut-throat business decisions and past examples of flouting the rules, but it once again worked in Las Vegas.

The improved goaltending has been a huge boon to the Golden Knights, as has been the play of Mitch Marner, but the impact of replacing Bruce Cassidy with Tortorella with only a couple of weeks remaining in the regular season has been shockingly brilliant.

Tortorella must be credited for how he changed the fortunes without actually changing the system. With him at the helm, all of those players who were under-achieving found their footing just in time to win the Pillow Fight Pacific Division and since marched to the final.

And like Carolina, the Golden Knights have become better as every series continued along.

It will make for an interesting final round.

As for those who will decry a Carolina-Vegas matchup as not being sexy from a marketing perspective, they are missing the boat. The Golden Knights are proud to be the bad boys and a team people cheer against.

Finally, the post-mortem of Colorado’s season is an interesting study. First off, calls for the firing of coach Jared Bednar are absurd. Injuries, especially to Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon were fatal for the club.

That said, the Avalanche are in a precarious spot. Colorado will continue to be a contender, but the window for this core group’s second Stanley Cup title is closing quickly.

Other than Makar and forward Martin Necas, all of the team’s key players are past age 30, their goaltending eventually faltered when needed most and roster holes will become harder to fill for a team that has mortgaged its future in an attempt to duplicate its 2022 championship, having traded away its next three first-round picks.

The Avalanche braintrust must come up with some creative ways to remain a top dog.