Hurricanes close – Carolina ended a long wait for a Stanley Cup Final berth by closing out the Montreal Canadiens in five games, sending veterans Jordan Martinook, Jordan Staal, Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov and Jaccob Slavin into the franchise’s next, rare opportunity agains
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes were already moving through that familiar, warm kind of celebration when Rod Brind’Amour stepped in with a reminder that didn’t soften the moment.
He hugged his players and congratulated them for reaching the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in two decades. Then he made sure nobody mistook a breakthrough for an ending.
“All right, Marty, you got us here,” Brind’Amour told Jordan Martinook.
“One more,” Martinook replied. “Yep, one more.”
It took eight seasons under Brind’Amour — elevated to head coach in 2018 after seven years as an assistant — to push through an Eastern Conference final roadblock. On Friday night. Carolina closed out the Montreal Canadiens in five games. turning a two-decade absence from the Final into something the veterans could finally hold.
The win mattered most to five players who have been here through the pain of three previous exits in this round. Martinook joined captain Jordan Staal. forwards Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov. and defenceman Jaccob Slavin as the faces of a group that has carried the weight since Jordan Staal was still a player learning the grind of Brind’Amour’s system. years before this run broke through.
“It’s hard to really describe,” Staal said as he sat at his locker. “It’s been a lot of grinding, a lot of ups and downs. … I’m just so happy to be where we’re at and just excited for the opportunity ahead.”
Carolina’s climb started after the franchise’s nine-year playoff drought. Brind’Amour was promoted in 2018, and the Hurricanes have not missed the post-season since. For this quintet. the progression has also been personal — tied to how Carolina built a roster around compete-first habits and long stretches without blinking.
Staal arrived when the Hurricanes acquired him from Pittsburgh during the 2012 NHL entry draft. He had won the Cup with the Penguins in 2009. a run that included a sweep of the Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference final when Brind’Amour was still a player. but Staal then endured Carolina’s stretch of playoff-free seasons.
Slavin was a 2012 fourth-round pick, spending three seasons with Carolina before emerging as one of the NHL’s defence-first blue liners.
Aho, a 2015 second-round pick, played two seasons with Carolina on his way to becoming the Hurricanes’ top-line centre.
Martinook came to Raleigh days after Brind’Amour took over, acquired from Arizona and slated to join Staal on a strong checking line.
Svechnikov was drafted with the No. 2 overall pick a month after Brind’Amour’s promotion, and he has become a physical fixture on Aho’s wing.
The results arrived quickly, even when the ending kept slipping away. Carolina took out the reigning Cup champion Washington Capitals in a seven-game first-round series, then made an unexpected trip to the Eastern Conference final before being swept by Boston.
They returned to the Eastern Conference final again in 2023 with home-ice advantage against the Florida Panthers, only to be swept again by four one-goal margins, including a four-overtime epic in Game 1.
Last year, Carolina came back for a rematch that quickly went wrong. They lost Games 1 and 2 in a performance that frustrated a normally rowdy, exuberant home crowd, fell into an 0-3 series hole, and exited in five games.
That sequence dropped the Hurricanes to 1-12 in that round under Brind’Amour — consistent regular-season strength that never quite translated into the playoff breakthrough.
On Friday night, the conversation wasn’t just about winning a series. It was about what that stretch has meant, and how much the group has carried from year to year. Brind’Amour pointed to the grind and the flack that can come when a team keeps falling one step short.
“They’ve really grinded out and did it the right way,” Brind’Amour said. “And took a lot of, I think, flack for getting this far and not getting past it. Unduly. I don’t think that was right, because they played as hard as they could. … They gave it everything they had, and that’s all you can ask.
“We got better this year, we added some pieces that made us better to get us to this point. But as a coach, you watch these guys every day, there’s nobody luckier than me to have these guys, the way they approach their business on a daily basis, not just now.”
Nothing illustrated that sharper edge than the way Carolina handled Montreal.
After sweeping Ottawa and Philadelphia in the first two rounds, the Hurricanes secured an 11-day between-rounds break — the longest in the playoffs in more than a century. The expectation, at least in the first moments, was almost cruelly inverted.
Carolina started the series with a brutal swing: Montreal pounced for four first-period goals in a 6-2 win in Game 1 that harkened back to the kind of conference-final troubles Carolina had seen before.
Then the tested part kicked in.
Nikolaj Ehlers delivered a 3-2 overtime win for Carolina in Game 2. They won Game 3 by the same OT score on Svechnikov’s road winner. with Aho screening Jakub Dobes at the top of the crease. After that. Carolina leaned into the smothering style Staal likened to a “machine. ” winning 4-0 on the road. before Friday’s 6-1 home win.
By reaching the Stanley Cup Final with only one loss since 1983. Carolina became the first team to do so since the league went to best-of-seven series in all four post-season rounds in 1987 — a stat that doesn’t capture what this group has been through. but underlines what the comeback really required.
Now there’s another series ahead, and it’s a different kind of unfamiliar. The Hurricanes are set for a date with Vegas for the Cup — a rare new experience for the holdovers who have grown up in the long, familiar rhythm of near misses.
Aho summed up the feeling of letting go of the noise and leaning into what the room believed all along.
“I feel like it was more maybe you guys talking about, ‘Oh, this is the Eastern Conference final, can’t go past it,’” Aho told reporters in the locker room afterward. “I thought the room was definitely very confident in what we can do. But yeah, it feels good to play for the Cup now.”
Carolina Hurricanes Stanley Cup Final Montreal Canadiens Rod Brind'Amour Jordan Martinook Jordan Staal Sebastian Aho Andrei Svechnikov Jaccob Slavin Vegas NHL playoffs
So they waited 20 years and finally got in… about time.
I don’t even follow hockey like that but Jordan Staal sounds like he’s always been on some comeback story. Is Aho the goalie or am I mixing stuff up?
“One more” like that’s just how it works lol. Thought they already were in the Cup final last year though, maybe I saw a headline wrong. Also Martinook sounds made up, idk why.
This is wild because every time I hear “Hurricanes” I think like storms in North Carolina, not NHL. They say it’s the first time in two decades but my cousin swears they got close in like 2010? Either way happy for the veterans I guess.