[Keanue Reeves voice from the greatest movie ever made] It’s gotta be that way. I might feel a bit bitter about all of this because we just barely missed out on the Final that should have happened. And when I say “barely” I mean Colorado didn’t win a game in the Conference Finals (somehow) and didn’t even get close to making that series competitive. Every year the playoffs give us something weird, and the Vegas Golden Knights (12.3% chance of beating Colorado per us) not only gave us that weird thing but also made us (Evolving dash Hockey dot com) look extremely foolish. Ok, very few people (except my Dad, who was still resentful about the Wild losing) expected Vegas to, at the very least, beat the 2026 Colorado Avalanche let alone sweep them, but it happened. I’m still pretty mad about all of this but because I’m supposed to stay “objective” and “unbiased”, so I’m writing through the pain. I’m giving them their fair shake. I’m letting the models tell me what to think.

I suppose one doesn’t need the models to guess who might be favored here. The Carolina Hurricanes absolutely dominated a series like few have done in the last 20 years. They enter the fourth round, after an exceptional showing, as the clear favorite. Which leads us to one of the more divisive Cup Finals we’ve had in some time. There are large factions of fans that hate both of these teams. In a way I guess that might actually be good for business? At least it’s something new! There isn’t a clear bandwagon team here unless you really like hockey stats or really hate the Maple Leafs. I know who I’ll be cheering for, but there’s also the very strange aspect of a team finishing with 95 points (while somehow leading their division) making it this far. What a weird series of events the last seven weeks have been. Maybe it’s time to embrace the hate and anti-cheer. Let’s get to the Final!

Results:

Stanley Cup Final

Carolina Hurricanes (M1)     vs.    Vegas Golden Knights (P1)

76.1%                         23.9%

Evolving Hockey finds none of this surprising. The 2026 Carolina Hurricanes have dominated in ways very few teams ever do in the playoffs. Relative to every other team in any playoff year going back to 2007, the Hurricanes rank second in all-situations xGF differential (+28.4), fifth in all-situations CF differential (+382.9), second in EV xGF differential (+15.2), and sixth in EV CF differential (+276). The only teams above them in these metrics are the ’07-08 and ’08-09 Red Wings, the ’21-22 Avalanche, and the ’19-20 Golden Knights. While the prior Knights squad lost in the Conference Finals, all four of these teams played at least seven more games than the Hurricanes have currently played. On paper, like we’ve mentioned in every prior preview this year, this team is built to make charts and graphs and conditionally-formatted tables look really good. It’s just nice that all of this nerd stuff also seems to translate to how they play the game when one takes the time to watch them play the game – even if it is kind of annoying to watch them do that. I should mention here that Freddie Andersen has continued to make our (possibly overly-corrected-for-age projections) look foolish; having played in all 13 games for the Hurricanes, he sits second in GSAx behind only his previous rival Jakub Dobeš while still maintaining that rather orange rectangle above. Is “aging” a thing? Does one really get older? Carolina enters the Cup Final as our heavy favorite, but their opponent seems to have some kind of magical wizard power on their side. Or, they’re just the Vegas Golden Knights.

I guess I get to complain about the Golden Knights again instead of having to talk for the fourth time about how good the Colorado Avalanche are (sorry, that should be “were”). It’s time that I figure out how to give them some praise. Let me take like 30 minutes to go think about this and I’ll back, hold on. Ok, I’m back. Let’s go Dylan Coghlan and Kaedan Korczak! Possibly the most interesting aspect of Vegas in the playoffs this year is their defensemen utilization: their top-two pairs of McNabb/Theodore and Hanifin/Andersson have each played >225 minutes together at EV, but their bottom “pair” has been a consistently rotating group of the aforementioned players and Ben Hutton. Oddly, Coghlan and Korczak have only played together for 26 total minutes at EV. Despite this, both players rank among the top-15 skaters in Rel TM CF differential, and Coghlan didn’t even play in the first round. The clear story here, however, is Mitch Marner. Leading all skaters in points through 16 games with his much-covered struggles in previous playoffs with another team, we’re now finally witnessing what our metrics have shown for years in the regular season: he’s quite good. To be fair, he’s been much better with the Knights in the playoffs than he ever was with the Leafs (there’s nothing to read into here, at all). With an incredibly fortunate performance from Carter Hart (now third among playoff goalies in GSAx), Vegas enters the Cup Final with momentum. Unfortunately for them, we all know that stats win Cups and the Carolina Hurricanes were built specifically to make those stats look good. Regardless, this is a Haters Final, and I have a hunch more people than usual will be watching to cheer against one of these teams rather than for one. Is that good? As a part-time Hater myself, I kind of like it. I’m down with this. Let’s hate.