You can say a lot of complimentary things about these Carolina Hurricanes. And I will! They are relentless, squeezing the life out of their Eastern Conference opponents by outskating them to every puck and outworking them on every battle. They are rested, having gone 12-1 on their way to the Stanley Cup Final, with plenty of time between each round to let wounds heal. But one thing they are not, perhaps, is battle-tested. They have not struggled, have not stressed on the way to get here. Each time they have metaphorically punched an opponent in the mouth, that opponent has gone down and stayed down. The Golden Knights punched back on Tuesday, the clear aggressors in a wild Game 1 that saw Las Vegas emerge with the 5-4 victory.
So many of Vegas's goals came off applying just a little bit of pressure to Carolina—nothing out of the ordinary for a good hockey team, but the sort of sustained and psychologically erosive checking that lesser teams just aren't capable of mustering for 60 minutes. And the Hurricanes, so poised up until this round, were repeatedly pestered into errors: turnovers, failed clears, lackadaisical backchecking. At inopportune times the Canes looked like ... well, like the teams the Canes have beaten. They'd better internalize quickly that this ain't Montreal. The Knights have a knack for poking and prodding pressure points, and it's on their targets not to flinch under it, because they're not going to let up, and they're not going to miss many opportunities to take advantage of lapses.
"It's those mistakes we made tonight that really [we] just don't make. And we made too many of those," said coach Rod Brind'Amour. "They forced us into them and we didn't handle pressure particularly well."
It looked like it would be same ol' same ol' when Nik Ehlers scored just 25 seconds in, the third-fastest goal to kick off a Cup Final in NHL history. It looked even more like it when Ehlers notched a second 12 minutes later. No team's ever come back from down multiple goals in a Cup Final Game 1, and the Canes in particular decline to sit back and turtle to protect leads. They didn't here, really, either. There was too much time left. But the Golden Knights got one back just a minute later, and then came out with afterburners for the period of the long change. Just 30 seconds into the second, a lazy Carolina clear attempt was kept in the attacking zone, and a pinching-up defenseman kept it in again just a few seconds later. This all led to Ivan Barbashev tying the game at 2. Four minutes later off an offensive-zone faceoff, the Knights forced a turnover behind the net despite inferior numbers, and Bill Karlsson gave Vegas the lead.
There were still things to like for Carolina from this game. They didn't change things up much after going down, and were rewarded by tying the game at three and then again at four, on goals from Jordan Staal and Shayne Gostisbehere. In between, however, the mistakes continued. Jalen Chatfield couldn't clear a puck that led directly to (yet another!) Brett Howden goal. Sebastian Aho had his pocket picked by Pavel Dorofyev for a great chance that Freddie Anderson turned away.
Then Tomas Hertl scored what would stand as the game-winner when Gostisbehere allowed him a stride or two of space, right into the slot.
It's June and legs get tired, but there aren't many worse times to conserve energy. "It was definitely on me," Gostisbehere said. "Just took a breather for a second."
The Canes haven't made many mistakes to this point in the playoffs, and their opponents haven't often made them pay when they have. That's kind of quietly a drawback of dominance: When you're that much better than the teams you play, you don't learn much about yourself beyond a broad sense of that superiority itself. We haven't seen, until now, whether Carolina can keep it up when an opponent can hang. Vegas, with their 200-foot checking mindset, is looking like a real crucible for this squad's commitment to its plan and a measuring stick for its skill.
Which means it's time for everybody's favorite and least productive game: What does this mean for the rest of the series? What can we surmise from one measly game, which looked fairly matched with subpar goaltending on both sides, and saw both teams repeatedly pulling themselves up off the mat? Ain't played nobody is the mindless sports taunt with perhaps the realest truth at its core. It sure looks like the Hurricanes are finally playing somebody.
