Season Review #1: Carolina Hurricanes - 113 Points, 16-3 in the Playoffs, Stankoven 11 Goals, Bussi Stopped the Penalty Shot, Staal Lifted the Conn Smythe, Brind'Amour Won the Cup He Captained 20 Years Ago

On the evening of June 15, 2026, at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Brandon Bussi stopped 22 shots and did not allow a goal. Jordan Staal scored his eighth goal of the playoffs, Taylor Hall scored, and Nikolaj Ehlers scored into an empty net at 18:52 to make it 3-0 and ice the Stanley Cup. Bussi's glove hand went up. Staal skated to his teammates. And Rod Brind'Amour - who in June of 2006, twenty years and eleven days earlier, had stood on championship ice in Raleigh as Carolina's captain and lifted the Stanley Cup above his head - stood behind his bench as a head coach and watched his players do the same thing he had done two decades ago, in the same organisation, with the same franchise, with the same belief in the same structure that he had spent his adult life helping to build. The Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. Third time in franchise history. Twenty years since the last one. Earned across the most complete postseason of any team in the 2025-26 NHL calendar.

The 2025-26 Carolina Hurricanes finished 53-22-7 with 113 points - the highest points total in the Eastern Conference and the third-best in the NHL behind Colorado (121) and Dallas (112). Sebastian Aho led the team with 80 points and 53 assists, producing at the pace that has made him the franchise's most consistent individual since Brind'Amour gave him the alternate captaincy. Seth Jarvis led the team in goals with 32. Logan Stankoven, in his first full season after arriving in the Rantanen deal, produced 44 points in 81 games and scored in all four first-round games against Ottawa. Nikolaj Ehlers - signed in the offseason as the most consequential free-agent addition of the summer - provided the elite-level winger that Brind'Amour's system had lacked on the left side of the top six.

The goaltending tells the season's most interesting specific story. Brandon Bussi, who had been waived before the season began and found his way back to the roster, produced a 31-6-2 record in 39 starts with a 2.47 goals-against average, .895 save percentage, and two shutouts. He led the team in wins, ahead of Frederik Andersen (16-14-5, 3.05 GAA, .874 SV% in 35 starts) and Pyotr Kochetkov (2.33 GAA, the best individual GAA on the team in fewer starts). Alexander Nikishin, the young Russian defenceman, led the team in plus-minus at +17 and was named to the All-Rookie Team. The regular season was elite. The playoffs were something different entirely.

Brandon Bussi was waived before the 2025-26 season. He found his way back onto an NHL roster, produced a 31-6-2 record with a 2.47 goals-against average and .895 save percentage, and won more regular-season games than any other goaltender on the team. He entered the Stanley Cup Final as the backup to Frederik Andersen. He became the starter when Andersen allowed four goals on 16 shots through two periods in a game that required a different answer. He then stopped 87 shots in the games he played across the Final, including a 22-save shutout in Game 6 when the Stanley Cup was on the line. He also stopped Mitch Marner's penalty shot in Game 3 - with Vegas leading the series 2-1 and Marner already having scored a hat trick - in the specific moment that the Cup was decided. Everything in the series that followed flows from that stopped penalty shot. Marner scored the hat trick. Theodore's bounce won Game 3 in double overtime. And then Carolina won three straight. The Bussi stop is the hinge point of the series. He is 27 years old and had been waived two months before the season began. This is hockey.

Jordan Staal has been Carolina's captain since September 29, 2019. His brother Eric Staal captained the franchise to the Stanley Cup in 2006 - the Cup that Rod Brind'Amour won as a player and now won as a coach. Jordan Staal's 2025-26 regular season was 36 points in 75 games - competent, professional, the production of a veteran checking centre who leads through something other than points. His playoff contribution was the story: eight goals and four assists in 19 games, 35 shots on net, 84 hits, plus-6. Eight goals from a third-line centre who played his defensive-zone role every shift and scored in the moments when the team needed a goal that wasn't coming from the stars. The Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded annually to the MVP of the playoffs, went to Jordan Staal. He was not the highest-scoring player in the series. He was the most important. The distinction is the one the award's voters understood and the analytics confirm: the Hurricanes' postseason record with Staal playing his role was 16-3. That is the Conn Smythe case. He earned it.

The defining characteristic of the 2025-26 Carolina Hurricanes was not their offensive production - 296 goals for, ranked behind Colorado's 298 - or their defensive structure - 240 goals against, ranked outside the top five - or any single individual number in the standings. It was the complete absence of panic. When they lost ECF Game 1 to Montreal by three goals in their own building, Brind'Amour adjusted the matchups and won four straight. When they lost SCF Game 1 to Vegas in a four-point thriller, they won Game 2 in overtime and then went ahead 3-1 in the series before needing Game 6 to close it. When Marner scored a hat trick in Game 3 and took a penalty shot that could have extended a three-goal lead into something unassailable, Bussi stopped it and the game went to double overtime and Vegas won, and Carolina - now 2-1 behind in the series, having just blown a three-goal lead - won three of the next three games and raised the Stanley Cup.

The 16-3 postseason record is not the record of a team that was always better than its opponents. Ottawa competed. Philadelphia competed. Montreal won Game 1 convincingly and pushed the series to five games. Vegas won two Stanley Cup Final games, including a stunning Game 3 comeback from three goals down in double overtime. The 16-3 record is the record of a team that was better than its opponents when it mattered most - after losses, after momentum shifts, after the specific moments that turn playoff series. Carolina was never swept. Carolina responded every time. Carolina won.