The Vegas Golden Knights carried a seven-game win streak into Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final on Thursday night after beating the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 in Game 1 on Tuesday. It was a comeback that changed the tone of the series before the second game even started.
That mattered because Carolina had opened Game 1 with a goal in the first minute and led 2-0 after the first period, only to watch Vegas keep coming until the finish. Mitch Marner helped seal it when he blocked a shot with the inside of his left knee with 5.6 seconds left, a play that preserved the lead and sent the Golden Knights home with control of the series.
The result also extended a run that has made Vegas feel almost impossible to shake. The Golden Knights have won 20 of their last 25 games since a late-season coaching change, and that surge has carried them through multiple kinds of pressure. They rallied from a 2-1 deficit in Round 1 by winning a pair of overtime games before closing out Utah in six games. Later, they beat the Ducks in six games and won the last two games of that series, then swept Colorado in four games after taking both road games to open the Western Conference Final.
That run has been built on a way of playing that does not change much when the score turns against them. Mark Stone said the group has done a good job of sticking to its structure and avoiding unnecessary risks, and the evidence has been in the results. Colorado, which had led the league in scoring at 3.63 goals per game, managed only seven goals in four games against Vegas. For Carolina, which entered the final after going 12-1 through three playoff rounds, the loss was its first of the postseason and only its second in two months.
The swing is what makes Thursday night matter. John Tortorella has said momentum can disappear quickly and that winning one game should be followed by trying to win the next, and Game 1 showed how fast that can happen. Carolina had spent 11 days between rounds before facing Montreal in the conference finals, then arrived in the final as a team that had been almost flawless. Instead, it now had to answer a loss that came after an early lead and a late chance to hold on.
Vegas has already shown it can survive bad starts and road pressure. Carolina now has to show it can do the same after its first real crack in the playoffs, because Game 2 was scheduled for Thursday night and the series was already tilting toward a test of recovery rather than a simple reset.
