Hurricanes win Game 6, raise Cup for second time
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- Brandon Bussi recorded his first career playoff shutout with 22 saves in Game 6 after being inserted late in Game 3, a move that helped flip the series for Carolina.
- Jordan Staal won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP and became the first player to score in each of the first five Cup Final games; he also won the 2009 title with Pittsburgh.
- Taylor Hall scored 3:47 into Game 6, Jackson Blake added a goal and an assist, and Nikolaj Ehlers tacked on an empty-netter; Hall, who played for six NHL franchises before Carolina, called it his first Cup.
- Rod Brind'Amour, who captained Carolina to the 2006 Cup, got his name engraved on the trophy for a second time as coach after the franchise had been bounced in the conference finals twice in the past three years and three times in its eight-year playoff run.
- Vegas was limited to five total goals over Games 4 and 5 and went 18:37 without a shot on goal spanning the second and third periods of Game 6 — the Golden Knights' first shutout in a Cup Final.
- John Tortorella, who replaced Bruce Cassidy as Vegas's head coach with eight games left in the regular season and guided the team from third in the Pacific to a sweep of Presidents' Trophy-winning Colorado, fell short in his first Final appearance as bench boss.
Why it matters: Carolina ends a 20-year championship drought and a pattern of conference-final heartbreak with a roster anchored by veterans chasing their last rings, while Vegas's midseason coaching gamble under Tortorella — a Presidents' Trophy sweep of Colorado — produced a Final run but no Cup. For the Hurricanes, the title validates Brind'Amour's second-act tenure and the mid-series Bussi switchover that stabilized their goaltending.
