The Carolina Hurricanes are back in the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2006, and the roster that got them there was shaped as much by the players they missed as the ones they kept. Carolina will host the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 1 of the best-of-7 series at Lenovo Center on Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET.
Four key players in the lineup — Taylor Hall, Logan Stankoven, Nikolaj Ehlers and K'Andre Miller — were connected at least tangentially to the failed chase for Mikko Rantanen, a pursuit that ended with Carolina still standing in the last round of the season. The Hurricanes also talked to the Toronto Maple Leafs about Mitch Marner, but he declined to waive his no-trade clause, and later landed with Vegas in a sign-and-trade deal on July 1, 2025.
That sequence has turned into a strange kind of success story for Carolina. The team landed Rantanen and Hall in a blockbuster three-team trade that also involved the Chicago Blackhawks, with Colorado getting Jack Drury and Martin Necas, plus a second-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft and a fourth-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. Chicago kept 50 percent of Rantanen's $9.25 million salary to help make the deal work, and Carolina later added Hall and Nils Juntorp from Chicago while sending a third-round pick in the 2025 draft the other way.
Rantanen's time in Carolina was brief — 13 games — and it ended before the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline approached on March 7. The Hurricanes had begun shopping him before that deadline, and the fit never settled into something permanent, even after the club tried to persuade him to sign long term while giving him a chance to see whether he belonged.
Jordan Staal, who has spent 20 NHL seasons watching rosters change around him, called the Rantanen situation the weirdest he had ever been part of. He said the club was in a strange place while it was playing, because the players could feel the uncertainty before everything was sorted out. Jaccob Slavin put the outcome in blunter terms, saying it had obviously worked out well for the team and that, if Rantanen were still there, he would be helping in unbelievable ways too.
Eric Tulsky offered the clearest window into how Carolina keeps operating. He said the team wants to be aggressive on and off the ice and never wants to miss a chance to add a high-end player, because it does not want to get trapped by the what-ifs. That approach helped build a roster strong enough to reach the final anyway, even after two marquee pursuits came up empty.
The question now is not whether the Hurricanes can explain how they got here. They already have. The real test begins Tuesday night, when the version of the carolina hurricanes roster built from those misses is asked to finish the job against Vegas.
