Folks, we’ve done it. The Stanley Cup Final is here, and broadcast executives across the continent are crying in their beds. Market size, Sun Belt, blah blah blah.That’s their problem, not yours. The Carolina Hurricanes and Vegas Golden Knights are two well-built hockey teams with high-end players throughout their lineups, and each has spent the last seven weeks laying their conferences to waste. They deserve to be in this spot, and if you care enough to read this, they’ve earned your attention.We’re getting a great on-paper matchup. Let’s try to enjoy it.The oddsThere’s plenty of reason to believe each team should be the favorite.For Vegas, it’s that the Golden Knights dismantled a behemoth, sweeping the seemingly unbeatable Colorado Avalanche with one of the most stifling defensive playoff performances in recent memory. While the standings may not tell the tale, the Golden Knights were a sleeping giant given their territorial dominance this season.For Carolina, it’s the fact that the Hurricanes have lost just a single game during the entire postseason, a result that probably had more to do with rust than anything else, given the rest of their series against the Montreal Canadiens. For years, the entire Hurricanes’ ethos was questioned for their inability to get over the hump; here they are with a vengeance.If it has to be one team, though, it’s tough to go against the beasts of the East. Everything Carolina has built over the last decade has coalesced into this moment. The Hurricanes start in the driver’s seat as a result.The numbersThe Hurricanes are a well-oiled machine. They were one of the best five-on-five teams of the regular season, and that’s carried into the playoffs with a dominant 60.7 percent xG through three rounds. It’s a product of overwhelming offense that comes in waves, between the Canes’ signature forecheck, which is complemented by a stronger transition game, and relentless pressure in the defensive zone.Carolina may have had an easier path to this point, but going 12-1 with those sparkling numbers helped this team glow up from a plus-62 Net Rating to start the playoffs to a plus-74.By the numbers, the Golden Knights were a top five-on-five team of the regular season without the results on either end of the ice. But a change behind the bench has helped this group actually look like a five-on-five force. That’s helped Vegas jump nine goals to a plus-60 Net Rating.The Golden Knights are only hovering around break-even in xG through three rounds. But if they can crush Carolina’s momentum like they did Colorado’s in Round 3, after limiting one of the best offensive teams in the league to just 2.49 expected goals against, then this should be a tight series.The special teams battle may be another opening for Vegas. Neither team gives up much on the penalty kill, and both play a disruptive short-handed game. Carolina’s managed this far without a ton of power-play success because its penalty kill is so stingy. But the Golden Knights could challenge that, now that they’ve found their footing again with their five-forward top unit.The big questionCan Sebastian Aho’s line wake up at the right time?A year ago, the Hurricanes found themselves on the business end of a gentleman’s sweep. The soon-to-be back-to-back champion Florida Panthers took care of Carolina in five games in an Eastern Conference final that was closer than it seemed in some regards, but ultimately an ugly result for an overmatched roster that had spent the regular season raising expectations to an unreasonable level.The Panthers scored the first goal in Games 1, 2, 3 and 5, winning all four, and held a 21-10 edge in overall scoring, 15-5 at even strength. Along the way, they taught the Hurricanes lessons about physicality, consistency and composure that they’ve put to use this spring, but also raised questions about the limitations of their lineup. After all, Florida had depth to match Carolina’s with elite-talent alpha dogs such as Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk at the top of the pyramid. That’s tough to beat, and the Hurricanes didn’t come particularly close.Ahead of Florida’s clincher, Aho had three goals in his 13 career conference final games. That’s a decent rate for a bottom-sixer, not someone who typically leads his team in points. To make matters worse, he scored twice in the first period of Game 5, and Carolina still lost. You could imagine a world in which Aho was a big enough star to front a Stanley Cup champion, and you could imagine a world in which Carolina surrounded him with enough other high-end players to make the debate meaningless. Last summer, we were living in neither of them — and either way, Carolina didn’t seem fit to survive a late-playoff matchup without serious production from him.In a way, that’s the best compliment that can be paid to this version of the Hurricanes. They’re here despite three rounds’ worth of mid-grade play from their first line of Aho, Andrei Svechnikov and Seth Jarvis. In past years, that would’ve led to afternoons on the golf course. This postseason, it hasn’t mattered.We’ll go further into why that is the case in a bit. The short answer is that added scoring depth throughout the lineup has served as a layer of insulation against cold streaks and mediocre play from guys such as Aho; Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky is fond of saying that they had a team that could win if everything went right, but needed to build one capable of winning when things went wrong. They’ve done just that.