Carolina Hurricanes not wasting any time, score on first shot of Stanley Cup Final

The Stanley Cup Final — similar immoderate best-of-seven playoff bid — is typically much of a marathon than a sprint.

That said, you're not going to perceive excessively galore complaints astir a speedy start, and it's hard to get immoderate quicker than the Carolina Hurricanes.

The crippled got underway connected Wednesday nighttime successful Raleigh with the Vegas Golden Knights coming to municipality aft clinching the Western Conference rubric by mode of a stunning expanse of the Colorado Avalanche.

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Nikolaj Ehlers of the Carolina Hurricanes is congratulated by his teammates aft scoring a extremity against the Vegas Golden Knights during the archetypal play successful Game One of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

While Vegas-Carolina is not precisely ratings golden by immoderate stretch, it is simply a matchup betwixt 2 insanely bully hockey teams.

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Both person antithetic styles that marque them great, but Carolina's concealed weapons are operation and speedy starts.

Well, erstwhile the puck dropped successful Game 1, the broadcasts hadn't adjacent gotten done the starting lineups earlier Hurricanes guardant Nikolaj Ehlers enactment the location squad up by 1 connected the precise archetypal changeable of the series.

The Canes simply couldn't person asked for a amended start.

And, needless to say, it's the worst imaginable commencement for the Golden Knights.

And, if that wasn't enough, Ehlers had different 1 up his sleeve aboriginal successful the period.

Both of those goals were assisted connected by Jalen Chatfield.

The Canes person perfectly torn done the Eastern Conference en way to their 3rd Cup Final quality successful franchise history.

Nikolaj Ehlers of the Carolina Hurricanes celebrates with teammates aft a extremity during the archetypal play against the Vegas Golden Knights successful Game One of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final. (Photo by Cato Cataldo/NHLI via Getty Images)

Despite the speedy start, Vegas did drawback a large interruption connected a fortunate bounce to chopped the pb to 2-1, a extremity that was credited to Shea Theodore.

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Carolina swept the Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers successful the archetypal and 2nd rounds, respectively. The Hurricanes past dropped Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Montreal Canadiens earlier rebounding to triumph the adjacent 4 games and clinch the bid successful five.

Game 2 is Thursday successful Raleigh, past the bid volition displacement to Las Vegas for Game 3 Saturday and Game 4 the pursuing Tuesday.