Vegas Golden – With Carolina visiting Vegas for Game 4 on Tuesday, the Golden Knights are one win away from a 3-1 series lead—and a historical advantage. After games shaped by blown two-goal leads and a Game 3 comeback that turned a 4-0 deficit into a three-goal burst in 39
Tuesday’s Game 4 doesn’t feel like a normal next step in a Stanley Cup Final. It feels like a fork in the road—one where a single bounce off boards, or a single mistake that turns into a goal, can reshape everything.
The Carolina Hurricanes visit the Vegas Golden Knights for Game 4 on Tuesday with the series already carrying a familiar theme: twists and turns that have repeatedly escaped the script. What was expected to be a high-checking. low-scoring championship round has instead opened up at times. with both teams scoring in bursts off each other’s errors.
Right now, Vegas has reason to believe the next turn could land them close to the finish line. If the Golden Knights win and take a 3-1 series lead. they would move into a position that is “almost unbeatable.” Teams holding a 3-1 advantage in the Stanley Cup Final are 38-1. with the only loss coming 84 years ago when Detroit lost a 3-0 lead and fell to Toronto.
Carolina’s path runs through the opposite direction. A Hurricanes victory would not only even the best-of-seven series, it would also regain home-ice advantage—setting up potentially two of the three remaining games in Carolina.
The numbers in this final have been unusually loud. Through three games. the teams have combined for 25 goals. the highest total through three games in the final since the New York Islanders and Minnesota North Stars had 30 in 1981. And the trend hasn’t been subtle. Blown leads of at least two goals have shown up in each game.
Vegas responded to one of those setbacks in Game 1, rallying from a deficit of at least two goals. Carolina mirrored that in Game 2, doing it from the other side of the ice.
Then came Saturday night’s Game 3, the kind of swing that changes how a team imagines the next shift. The Golden Knights led 4-0 well into the third period, before the Hurricanes scored three goals in a record 39 seconds. Carolina forced overtime. but Vegas ended up winning in double overtime after Shea Theodore bounced a puck off the boards that caromed off goalie Brandon Bussi’s skate.
Those details matter now because they connect directly to the most immediate question for Carolina. Bussi hadn’t played in two months before entering the third period after coach Rod Brind’Amour saw enough of Frederik Andersen. Vegas couldn’t solve Bussi until that final, chaotic shot—so the possibility that Bussi starts Tuesday is real.
Brind’Amour said he knows who will start, but isn’t letting on.
That uncertainty is the pressure cooker behind Game 4: a series with history attached to a 3-1 lead, a momentum swing that already included a 4-0 collapse, and a goalie decision that could determine whether the next strange bounce goes the same way or breaks the pattern entirely.
Game 4 arrives with the kind of stakes you can feel even before the puck drops—because this final has already proven that what’s supposed to happen isn’t always what does.
Vegas Golden Knights Carolina Hurricanes Stanley Cup Final Game 4 3-1 series lead Brandon Bussi Rod Brind'Amour Frederik Andersen Shea Theodore double overtime