RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — One sweep and one lopsided five-game series in the third round sucked some of the air out of the NHL playoffs.
Vegas and Carolina brought it all back with a terrific start to the Stanley Cup Final.
The Golden Knights' 5-4 victory on Tuesday night had a little bit of everything, from Nikolaj Ehlers scoring 25 seconds in for the Hurricanes and lifting an already riled-up crowd to its feet to each goaltender making big saves to keep
the puck out of the net. The only thing missing was the lockdown defense that got these teams to this point, but that only made for a more entertaining opener.
Sure, maybe it was a bit of a coach's nightmare with all the odd-man rushes and even some breakaways as the grade-A chances piled up. Ehlers scored twice on those, and Logan Stankoven got in all alone before getting denied by Carter Hart.
Vegas rallied from another multi-goal deficit after falling behind by two just over 12 minutes in. When Ivan Barbashev scored 30 seconds into the second, he made this the first Cup final game in history with goals that quickly in each of the first two periods.
Jordan Staal scoring his first goal at this stage of the playoffs since 2009 and breaking older brother Eric's record for the longest gap between Cup final goals brought the crowd back to life. So did Shayne Gostisbehere tying it with under nine minutes left in regulation.
Hart made his biggest stop of the night with 3:43 left, flashing his glove to rob Seth Jarvis, Carolina's top-line right wing whose snakebit struggle of a run continued.
But the Golden Knights had one more highlight-clip moment in a game full of them. Colton Sissons' backhand pass set up Tomas Hertl — who also had a rough go the first couple of rounds — for the go-ahead goal, just 19 seconds after Hart stopped Jarvis.
After a ton of excitement between two hockey powerhouses, viewers can only hope for six more games just like this one.
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