The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Visit a landmark today. Inside:
While You Were Taking Finals: The hottest team in hockey stays scaldingThe Vegas Golden Knights, at this moment in time, represent one of the most thrilling archetypes we have in sports: the playoff team that gets really, really hot. Sometimes those teams win championships — see both of Eli Manning’s Giants Super Bowl teams — but mostly, we see these teams regress to the mean. Crash out. There’s still time for the Golden Knights to falter, but last night wasn’t very convincing. Vegas is up 1-0 in the Stanley Cup Final after an intense 5-4 road win in Carolina. It is the Golden Knights’ seventh consecutive win. It was the Hurricanes’ second loss in 14 games this postseason. A final stat from our great game story: Teams that win Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final have gone on to win the series 76.4 percent of the time. Read that full story here.Elsa / Getty ImagesThat was our first dish. Tonight, the fun begins on the hardwood:
It’s hard to remember a more highly anticipated NBA Finals matchup than this one. A true blueblood franchise in New York, facing the organization with three more titles than the Knicks in half the time. Two superstars are taking this stage — Victor Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson, who have become faces of the league — for the first time. This is legacy-making stuff. It’s also great that those two are about as far apart in height as possible.
