The Carolina Hurricanes are Stanley Cup champions for the first time since 2006, closing out the Final 4-2 with a 3-0 Game 6 shutout on the road in Las Vegas. Taylor Hall and Jackson Blake scored, each netting his seventh goal of the postseason, and rookie Brandon Bussi capped a remarkable late-season rise with the clinching shutout. The title turns years of regular-season excellence into a championship for a Carolina side that went 15-2 in the playoffs and twice erased multi-goal Final deficits (back from 3-0 in Game 2 and 4-0 in Game 3). Vegas, the 2023 champion, reached its second Final in four years behind Mitch Marner and Jack Eichel but ran out of answers. How our Game 6 card fared: it was a rough night in a low-event clincher, with the best bet (over 5.5) and the Seth Jarvis scorer pick both missing and our Vegas-steals-it prediction wrong, though the model's season-long call that Carolina was the heavy favorite to lift the Cup proved correct. Captain Jordan Staal won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, scoring six goals in the Final (including in each of the first five games, the first player to do that since 1956) and, at 37, becoming the oldest Conn Smythe winner in NHL history.
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