Logan Stankoven is going to his first Stanley Cup Final, and the Carolina Hurricanes are going with him. The 23-year-old from Kamloops helped push Carolina into its first Final in 20 years, giving his hometown a front-row seat to one of the sport’s biggest stages.
That is why Stankoven is drawing searches now: the Stanley Cup Final starts Tuesday at 5 p.m. in Carolina, and Kamloops also has Kelly Olynyk in the NBA Finals beginning Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. in San Antonio. For one city, it is an unusual week with two players from the same place chasing the same kind of prize on different rinks and courts.
Stankoven’s run has been a major part of the Hurricanes’ push. He is third in the NHL with nine playoff goals, and he skates on Carolina’s most productive line alongside Taylor Hall and Jackson Blake. That production has made the Kamloops native one of the most visible players on a team that has not played for the Cup in two decades.
He was not built for this stage overnight. Stankoven spent parts of five seasons with the Blazers before reaching the NHL and was already a conference final participant with Dallas in 2024. This spring, he has gone one step further with Carolina, and the result is a place in the Cup Final on a team that had not gotten this far in 20 years.
Olynyk gives the week a strange parallel. The South Kamloops Secondary alum is in his second NBA Final with the San Antonio Spurs after previously reaching the championship series with the Miami Heat in the 2020 bubble, when Miami lost to the Los Angeles Lakers. This time, though, his role has been far smaller: he has played only 35 total minutes in the postseason, though he scored 25 points in them.
That contrast is part of what makes the Kamloops story so unusual. Stankoven is driving a contender’s offense in hockey’s biggest games, while Olynyk is back on the NBA’s final stage as a role player with limited court time. Both are still alive for their first championship, and both paths now land on the same week.
Game 1 in Carolina and the opener in San Antonio will decide whether Kamloops gets one trophy or two. If Stankoven’s scoring touch keeps carrying Carolina and Olynyk’s Spurs finish the job in the NBA, the city could be celebrating championships on back-to-back nights.
