RALEIGH, N.C. — Midway through the second period, the chants began: “Olé, olé olé olé.”They continued throughout Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, as the Carolina Hurricanes increased their lead from 3-0 to 5-0, and through the closing moments of their 6-1 Stanley Cup Final-clinching win over the Montreal Canadiens.To the victors go the spoils — and fans at Lenovo Center were more than willing to borrow the trademark chant from the Bell Centre in Montreal, early and often through a game that turned into an extended coronation for the Eastern Conference champs.The Hurricanes, whose 113 regular-season points led the conference, next face the Western Conference champion Vegas Golden Knights. The series begins June 2 in Raleigh.
Carolina, as so often has been the case during the postseason, was powered by contributions from its second and fourth lines during a three-goal first period. Taylor Hall, the dynamic veteran winger acquired at the 2024 trade deadline, opened the scoring nine minutes, 17 seconds into the game, pushing a rebound past Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobeš. The goal came on a net-front rebound off a shot by Logan Stankoven, who made contact with Dobes, and was the fifth time in five games that Carolina scored first — a crucial factor against a Canadiens team that profoundly struggled to generate offense.Stankoven scored his ninth goal of the playoffs of his own six minutes later, and fourth-liner Eric Robinson added another at 16:52, giving Carolina a 3-0, first-intermission lead — a margin that seemed to be insurmountable and turned out to be just that.Jackson Blake, the other member of the Hall-Stankoven line, pushed the score to 4-0 at 7:19 of the second period. The goal gave all three members of the line at least five postseason goals and a 43rd combined point.Shayne Gostisbehere increased Carolina’s lead to 5-0, a score that held until Cole Caufield beat Frederik Andersen with a power-play wrister at 10:50 of the third period. Andersen finished with 23 saves on 24 shots.The Canadiens losing Games 4 and 5 in this manner, thoroughly dominated and unable to do anything remotely productive with the puck over 120 minutes of hockey, in no way diminishes what was accomplished this season for a team that is still in the latter stages of a rebuild. But what these two games did provide is an indication of how much work is left and how much their young players have left to learn.And perhaps the lingering feeling of these two losses — and honestly, the two overtime losses that preceded them were not all that territorially close either — could benefit this young group and help it to learn the level of focus required to play at your best at this stage of the playoffs.
