Hurricanes win Stanley Cup with Game 6 shutout of Golden Knights

The Carolina Hurricanes blanked the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 in Sunday’s Game 6 to win the Stanley Cup.

Brandon Bussi stood tall for the visitors, stopping 22 shots to secure the shutout.

Taylor Hall scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal 3:47 into the game. Jackson Blake doubled Carolina’s lead in the second period, and Nikolaj Ehlers iced the contest with an empty-netter.

It’s the second title in Hurricanes history and it comes 20 years after Carolina won its first Stanley Cup in 2006.

Captain Jordan Staal won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP becoming the oldest player to win the award. Staal scored a goal in each of the first five games of the Cup Final, eventually finishing with six tallies in six contests while also supplying brilliant defensive work on the Golden Knights’ top line.

“This is something I’ve been going after ever since we got the first one,” Staal, who won the Cup in 2009 with the Pittsburgh Penguins, told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan. “You want to win it again and again and again. What a feeling. What a battle. The boys were grinding today, my goodness. So many individual efforts just to keep the puck out of our net. It was an amazing ride and I’m just so proud of these guys.”

The Hurricanes went a sparkling 16-3 in the playoffs, starting their run with back-to-back sweeps of the Ottawa Senators and the Philadelphia Flyers. The dropped the first game of the Eastern Conference Final to the Montreal Canadiens before reeling off four straight wins to reach the Cup Final.

The Cup win capped an incredible year for Jaccob Slavin as he became the ninth player to win Olympic gold and the Stanley Cup in the same season.

Rod Brind’Amour also joined elite company Sunday becoming the fourth person in NHL history to captain and later coach the same franchise to a Stanley Cup. He joins Toe Blake (Montreal), Hap Day (Toronto), and Cooney Weiland (Boston).

“Just to see the boys, they’re so happy for everyone. That’s what this is about,” Brind’Amour told Sportsnet’s Kyle Bukauskas. “That’s what hockey’s about. It’s the ultimate team sport. And you see it here in the way they celebrate. They know how hard they worked for this. This didn’t just happen. It didn’t just happen this year. These guys have been doing this for eight years, and it finally came through.”

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