Hurricanes crush Canadiens to claim Eastern Conference championship, earn spot in Stanley Cup Final

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Hurricanes have finally broken through their Eastern Conference Final roadblock. Now comes the chance to play for the Stanley Cup for the first time in two decades.

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Taylor Hall, Logan Stankoven, and Eric Robinson scored in a dominating first period that helped push the Hurricanes past the Canadiens, 6-1, on Friday night, closing a five-game series that sent the Eastern Conference’s top seed on to face Vegas for the Cup.

Jackson Blake and Shayne Gostisbehere added second-period goals that pushed the Hurricanes to a 5-0 lead entering the final period, while Seth Jarvis scored into an empty net with 3:41 left. Frederik Andersen carried a shutout until midway through the third in net.

Carolina swept through the first two rounds of the playoffs, then regrouped from a Game 1 loss to the Canadiens after an extended between-rounds break to win four straight. That included a run of 10 straight goals going back to Andrei Svechnikov’s overtime winner in Game 3 before Montreal finally got on the board with Cole Caufield’s power-play score at 10:50 of the third.

That made the Hurricanes the first team to reach the Stanley Cup Final with only one loss since 1983, according to SportRadar, and the only team to do so since the league went to best-of-seven series in all four postseason rounds in 1987.

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Hall struck first by finishing a feed from Logan Stankoven, who had crashed into Jakub Dobes on the left side. The Canadiens challenged the call for goaltender interference, but officials determined after a replay review that it should stand.

Hall returned the favor by feeding Stankoven from behind the net for a score on the right side. And late in the period, William Carrier sent a high-flip from deep in his own end to feed Robinson, who charged across the blue line to beat Mike Matheson to the puck and slip it underneath Dobes for the 3-0 lead that sent a buzzing home crowd into yet another roar.

Blake scored by skating in to clean up a rebound when Dobes stopped a breakaway for Hall, while Gostisbehere finished a power-play feed from Jarvis near the crease for the 5-0 lead.

The Hurricanes entered this series having gone 1-12 in the Eastern Conference Final in their eight-year postseason run under coach Rod Brind’Amour, falling in sweeps to Boston in 2019 and Florida in 2023 before losing in five games to the Panthers in last year’s rematch.

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