June 14 (Reuters) – The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 on Sunday to win their second Stanley Cup championship and first since 2006.
Taylor Hall, Jackson Blake and Nikolaj Ehlers scored for Carolina while Brandon Bussi recorded 22 saves in the shutout as the visiting Hurricanes closed out the NHL’s best-of-seven championship series in six games.
“A state of shock,” Hall, who is playing for his seventh NHL team, said after finally winning a Stanley Cup. “Your mind wanders the last couple of days and wonders what it may be like out here and it’s better than I could have expected.
“My career has taken a lot of different turns but to end up here with this group of guys and to do it like this is amazing.”
Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal, who scored in five of six games in the Stanley Cup Final, was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the Most Valuable Player of the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup playoffs.
At 37, Staal is the oldest player to win the award.
“It’s amazing, this is something I’ve been going after since we got the first one,” said Staal, who was traded to Carolina in June 2012.
“You want to win it again and again and again. And what a feeling, what a battle. The boys were grinding today. My goodness, so many individual efforts.”
The 34-year-old Hall, who was taken with the first pick in the 2010 NHL Draft, gave Carolina all the scoring they would need when he took a long pass from defenseman Jaccob Slavin and fired a wrist shot that beat Carter Hart on the glove side less than four minutes into the game.
Carolina goalie Brandon Bussi, who was claimed off waivers last October after sitting third on the Florida Panthers’ depth chart, preserved the Hurricanes’ lead with a diving save on Pavel Dorofeyev just before the horn sounded to end the first period with Vegas on a powerplay.
Blake doubled Carolina’s lead in the middle frame when he received a pass from the corner by Logan Stankoven and ripped a close-range snap shot that went in off the stick of Vegas forward Mitch Marner.
The Golden Knights nearly pulled to within one on a powerplay just past the midway mark of the final period but Jack Eichel, with Bussi out of position and without a stick, fired the puck off the crossbar.
Vegas pulled their goalie in the closing minutes for an extra attacker but, despite throwing everything they could at the Carolina, were unable to beat Bussi. Ehlers then iced the victory with a goal into an empty net.
The win capped a remarkable run for the Hurricanes, who were the top seed in the Eastern Conference before enjoying a dominant 16-3 run through the postseason which marked the second-best playoff record since the NHL went to four best-of-seven series in 1987.
Vegas, who stunned the top-seeded Colorado Avalanche with a four-game sweep in the Western Conference Final, were seeking their second Stanley Cup after first raising hockey’s most coveted prize three years ago.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Additional reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Rutherford and Clarence Fernandez)
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