Carolina Back In NHL’s Final Four; Are Hurricanes Again On Thin Ice?
By David Glenn
For the fourth time in the eight-year tenure of head coach Rod Brind’Amour, the Carolina Hurricanes are playing in the National Hockey League’s version of the Final Four.
This time, the Canes will face the Montreal Canadiens in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference championship series, with Game One in Raleigh on Thursday (8 p.m., TNT/truTV/HBO Max). The Carolina-Montreal winner will advance to play either Colorado or Vegas next month, with the Stanley Cup on the line.
Depending on your point of view, Carolina is either the favorite to win the 2026 Stanley Cup … or headed for yet another Final Four disappointment.
Consider the conflicting evidence at hand.
(AP Photo / Matt Slocum)
Glass-half-full: Since the creation of the current NHL playoff format (which requires four best-of-seven series victories to claim the Cup) in 1987, this year’s Hurricanes are the first and only team that has started the postseason 8-0.
Carolina swept the Ottawa Senators in four games, then swept the Philadelphia Flyers in four games. In those eight contests, the Hurricanes outscored their opponents by a combined 24-10 margin. While some questioned the caliber of the team’s competition in those series, that was truly dominant hockey.
Nobody is claiming true perfection — the Canes have been committing an uncharacteristic number of penalties, for example — but it’s difficult to argue with 8-0.
Glass-half-empty: A modern NHL playoff trend actually suggests that the Hurricanes’ recent dominance, and the ensuing lengthy delays (while waiting for other series to finish) between games, will work against them.
While Carolina played the absolute minimum number of games (eight) to advance to the Eastern Conference finals, Montreal played the absolutely maximum number of games (14) to get there. The Canadiens needed the full seven-game series to eliminate Tampa Bay in the first round, then once again the maximum seven contests to eliminate Buffalo in the second round.
Fans, media, coaches and players in a wide variety of sports have participated in various renditions of the “rest-versus-rust” debate for decades, but there’s no denying one reality of the NHL’s postseason over the past quarter-century or so: The “relatively rested” teams haven’t fared very well.
Since 2000, there have been just eight Stanley Cup playoff series in which one team was coming off a Game Seven victory (in this case, Montreal eliminated Buffalo on Monday night with a 3-2 overtime win) and the other was coming off a four-game sweep (here, the Hurricanes). In a historical surprise to many, the Game Seven winner captured seven of those eight series, even sweeping their “hot and rested” opponent in two cases.
Glass-half-full: This Carolina team is much better than Brind’Amour’s previous three Eastern Conference finalists, which not only lost each of those ECF series but dropped 12 of their 13 games and were outscored 48-21 in the playoffs’ penultimate round.
Only time will tell, of course, but several factors suggest things will be different for the Hurricanes this year.
For starters, Carolina had the best regular-season record (53-22-7, 113 points) in the Eastern Conference this season. None of the franchise’s three other recent ECF participants had accomplished that feat.
The Hurricanes also are the hottest team in the NHL. Since March 31, their record is 15-1-1, and they have outscored their opponents 62-33 in that span. By sweeping Ottawa and Philadelphia in the postseason, they dominated to a degree that none of their predecessors managed in the first two rounds.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, given both their recent postseason history (a measly average of only 1.6 goals per game in their ECF losses to Boston in 2019, Florida in 2023, then Florida again in 2025) and some of those valid questions about the competition provided by Ottawa and Philly this year, these Canes also offer much more scoring depth than those three ECF predecessors.
The team’s 296 goals during the 2025-26 regular season ranked second in the NHL (behind only Colorado) and set the franchise’s all-time record, surpassing the 286 regular-season goals of the 2005-06 squad, which of course went on to capture the Stanley Cup.
The Hurricanes had the most 20-goal scorers in the entire league during the regular season, with seven: Seth Jarvis (32), Andrei Svechnikov (31), Sebastian Aho (27), offseason acquisition Nikolaj Ehlers (26), Jackson Blake (22), Logan Stankoven (21) and team captain Jordan Staal (20). For comparison, the 2019 Canes had only four such players, the 2023 Canes just three, and the 2025 Canes only four.
Glass-half-empty: One — and only one — team went 3-0 against Carolina during the regular season, and that team was Montreal.
The NHL’s 82-game regular-season marathon stretched from mid-October to mid-April. The Canes-Canadiens games were played Jan. 1 in Raleigh, March 24 at Montreal, and March 29 in Raleigh.
Montreal captured all three contests in regulation and outscored Carolina by a whopping 15-8 margin.
Keep in mind, the Hurricanes had a perfect regular-season record (winning each time in regulation) against eight NHL teams. They had a winning record against 13 additional opponents, meaning 21 of 31 overall. They “broke even” against seven others, including Colorado. They went pointless against only three foes — two Western Conference opponents (St. Louis and Vegas) that they faced only twice each, plus Montreal, now their somewhat unlikely opponent (the Canadiens were only the #3 seed in the Atlantic Division) in the Eastern Conference finals.
Glass-half-full: After often being the playoff victim of the “hottest goalie in hockey,” the Hurricanes might have that guy wearing their uniform this year.
In 2019, 32-year-old veteran Boston goaltender Tuukka Rask had one of the hottest stretches of his entire career and was a central figure in the Bruins’ ECF sweep of Carolina. In 2023 and 2025, veteran Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (then 34 and 36) did much the same against the Hurricanes, with the latter series coming as the Panthers were in the process of finishing off their back-to-back Stanley Cup championships.
This time, according to both the eye test and the advanced hockey analytics, 36-year-old Carolina veteran Frederik Andersen is the hottest goalie in the playoffs.
A Denmark native now in his fifth season with the Hurricanes, Andersen has represented his native country in major international competitions (including the 2026 Winter Olympics) for two decades, and he has competed in 93 playoff games during his lengthy NHL career.
Entering the series against Montreal, Andersen is 8-0 during this year’s playoffs, with a minuscule 1.12 goals against average, a stellar .850 save percentage, and a league-best 11.2 “goals saved above expected,” an advanced-analytics number that factors in the degree of difficulty of the shots a goalie has faced.
Glass-half-empty: Montreal has the only other viable candidate for the “hottest goalie in hockey” label right now.
Long-time NHL fans likely remember legendary Canadiens goaltenders Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy.
As a 23-year-old rookie in 1971, Dryden led Montreal to the Stanley Cup title and captured the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ Most Valuable Player. As a 20-year-old rookie in 1986, Roy accomplished the same sensational double, a Stanley Cup championship and the postseason MVP honor.
This year, Montreal’s starter in net is 24-year-old Jakub Dobes. Although he played in 16 regular-season games and three playoff contests for the Canadiens last season, under NHL rules he’s still considered a rookie this season. Whereas Dryden and Roy were both natives of Canada, Dobes is from Czechia.
Dobes’ playoff numbers in most major categories (8-6, 2.52 GAA, .910 SV%) don’t come close to matching those of Andersen, but his 11.1 “goals saved above expected” (nearly tied with Andersen) make him the only other remaining playoff goalie with better than a 4.2 in that important category.
NHL Eastern Conference Finals
Game 1: Canadiens at Hurricanes, Thurs., 8 p.m. (TNT/truTV/HBO Max) Game 2: Canadiens at Hurricanes, Sat., 7 p.m. (TNT/truTV/HBO Max) Game 3: Hurricanes at Canadiens, May 25, 8 p.m. (TNT/truTV/HBO Max) Game 4: Hurricanes at Canadiens, May 27, 8 p.m. (TNT/truTV/HBO Max) Game 5*: Canadiens at Hurricanes, May 29, 8 p.m. (TNT/truTV/HBO Max) Game 6*: Hurricanes at Canadiens, May 31, TBA (TNT/truTV/HBO Max) Game 7*: Canadiens at Hurricanes, June 2, 8 p.m. (TNT/truTV/HBO Max)
*—if necessary
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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Holding Court: Carolina Hurricanes On Thin Ice Again Chapelboro.com.
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