Carolina Hurricanes
Colorado AvalancheThe Vegas Golden Knights fired their coach with eight games left in the season, went 7-0-1 under John Tortorella to win the Pacific Division, signed Carter Hart as a free agent and watched him go 6-0-0 at .930, got Mitch Marner - nine seasons in Toronto, never past Round 2 - to lead the entire playoffs in scoring, swept the 121-point Presidents' Trophy winners in the Western Conference Final, and lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Carolina Hurricanes in six games. This is the most unlikely Stanley Cup Final run in franchise history. It was also not enough.
On March 29, 2026, with eight games remaining in the regular season and a 32-26-16 record under Bruce Cassidy, the Vegas Golden Knights fired their coach. The timing was specific: Cassidy had gone 3-5-2 in his last ten games. The Pacific Division title - which would provide the home ice that the postseason structure rewards - was in reach but not guaranteed. The Golden Knights were sitting below the Edmonton Oilers and the Anaheim Ducks in the standings. They needed something different, and they needed it immediately. They called John Tortorella. He went 7-0-1 in eight regular-season games, delivering enough points to leapfrog both Edmonton and Anaheim and secure the Pacific Division title. He then coached the franchise through the Western Conference Final and into the Stanley Cup Final, sweeping the 121-point Presidents' Trophy winners - a team with 26 more regular-season points - in the Conference Final, and losing to the Carolina Hurricanes in six games. The regular season was mediocre. The playoff run was the most improbable in franchise history. Both belong to the same season.
32-26-16 Under Cassidy. 3-5-2 in His Final 10. 7-0-1 Under Tortorella. Division Title Secured. Playoffs Entered With Momentum Nobody Had Expected.
Carter Hart was signed as an in-season free agent and returned from injury on April 2 - a week after Tortorella's arrival. He went 6-0-0 with a .930 save percentage in six remaining regular-season games. He was then the team's playoff starter. Through three rounds - beating Utah, beating Anaheim, sweeping Colorado - he was one of the three or four most important individual players in the Golden Knights' run. His ability to limit the Presidents' Trophy winners to essentially nothing in the WCF sweep was the structural reason Vegas advanced. The Colorado Avalanche averaged 4.11 goals per game across their first two rounds; against Hart and the Tortorella defensive system they managed seven goals in four games. His arrival - the timing of it, the specific nature of his availability, the way the team's defensive structure complemented his game - was the most consequential transaction of the Golden Knights' season.
Mitch Marner Spent Nine Seasons With the Toronto Maple Leafs. He Never Made It Past the Second Round. In His First Season With Vegas, He Led the Entire NHL Playoffs in Scoring Through Three Rounds With 21 Points in 16 Games. He Was Plus-12. He Had a Penalty Shot Stopped in the Stanley Cup Final That Might Have Changed Everything.
Marner's nine seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs are the most publicly documented individual playoff suffering in the sport's recent history. Year after year, the Leafs entered the postseason with talent and expectations and produced first-round exits or second-round collapses. Marner produced individually in those runs - the points were always there - but the team result was always the same. He came to Vegas. In 2025-26 he had 21 points (seven goals, 14 assists) in 16 postseason games through the WCF, leading the NHL in scoring. He was plus-12. He had seven power-play points and four points on the penalty kill - the both-sides contribution that the coaches describe as the rarest individual playoff quality. Two of his goals were game-winners.
He scored a hat trick in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final - the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history, at 6:10 of the first period. He then took a penalty shot in Game 3 that, had it gone in, would have made it a four-goal lead instead of three. Brandon Bussi - the Carolina goaltender who had been waived before the season started and won his first NHL playoff game in Game 4 of the Final - stopped it. The Avalanche came back and won in double overtime. The series shifted. Whether Marner scores that penalty shot and the Golden Knights win Game 3 more comfortably and carry different momentum into Game 4 is the specific what-if that the 2025-26 season leaves behind. It was stopped. Game 3 went to double overtime. Vegas won. Then they lost three straight.
He was the best individual player in the Stanley Cup Final who did not win the championship. That is the specific kind of honour that hockey produces for extraordinary players on good teams that face better ones.
Tortorella's first playoff series · Hart dominant · Dorofeyev begins his 9-goal run
Anaheim PP went 0-for-11 in first 3 games after going 8-for-16 vs Edmonton · Howden SHG in G6
Presidents' Trophy winners · 26-point regular-season advantage · Makar absent G1-G2 · 7 goals in 4 games
Marner hat trick in G3 (fastest in SCF history) · Bussi stops Marner penalty shot · CAR wins G4-G6
| Player | POS | GP | G | A | PTS | NOTE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jack Eichel | C | ~80 | 27 | 63 | 90 | Team leader RS · 15 playoff pts (1G-14A) · +11 final 8 games |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | W | ~80 | 37 | - | ~65 | Team goals leader · 9 playoff goals (led NHL through 3 rounds) |
| Mitch Marner | RW | ~80 | - | - | ~75 | 21 playoff pts in 16 GP · +12 · fastest hat trick in SCF history · PS stopped G3 |
| Mark Stone | C | ~78 | - | - | +26 | Team plus/minus leader · captain · 9 playoff pts (5G-4A) |
| Shea Theodore | D | ~80 | 10 | 29 | 39 | Below lofty standards RS · scored WCF G3 2OT bounce winner |
| Carter Hart | G | ~25 | - | - | 6-0-0 | .930 SV% in 6 RS games after return · full playoff starter · WCF dominance |
“After spending a couple of weeks with the team, you can tell it's a really good group. I'm thrilled for the opportunity. Thrilled to be along for the ride with them.”
— John Tortorella, after the WCF sweep of Colorado - hired March 29, in the Stanley Cup Final by June
The Marner penalty shot in Game 3 is the singular moment the offseason will revisit until the franchise wins again. Trailing 4-1 with time running out, Carolina needed something. The penalty was called. Marner - who had scored a hat trick at 6:10 of the first period in the same game, the fastest in Stanley Cup Final history - went in alone on Brandon Bussi. Bussi stopped it. The game eventually went to double overtime. Theodore's bounce won it for Vegas. The series was 2-1. Then Carolina outscored Vegas 12-5 over three games and won the Cup on the Bussi shutout in Game 6 while Jordan Staal won the Conn Smythe with twelve points and eight goals and six Stanley Cup Final goals. The 2025-26 Vegas Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Final from a mediocre regular season, a mid-March coaching change, and an in-season free-agent goaltender. They were two games away from lifting the Cup and one stopped penalty shot from having a real chance at Game 3 - perhaps the series.
95 points. Coach fired in March. Tortorella 7-0-1. Hart returned from injury. Marner led the playoffs in scoring with 21 points and hit the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history. Swept the Presidents' Trophy winners. Lost to Carolina in six. The penalty shot that Bussi stopped in Game 3 is the moment the Stanley Cup was decided.
The B-plus is the honest grade for a season with a mediocre regular season (95 points, fired their coach in March) and an extraordinary playoff run (swept the 121-point Presidents' Trophy winners, reached the Stanley Cup Final, won two Final games against the team that finished 16-3).
If the regular season had matched the playoff performance, this is an A. If the penalty shot had gone in, the conversation changes. Neither happened. The grade reflects what actually occurred - a team that found something new in March, rode it to the Final, and lost to a better team in six.
Marner gets his first Final. The franchise gets its third Final in nine seasons. Tortorella gets a permanent story about what he did in three months. And the specific moment of Bussi stopping the penalty shot in Game 3 - a goaltender who had been waived before the season started, stopping the most important penalty shot in the most important game of the year - belongs to hockey history as the kind of moment the sport keeps forever in its archive of the specific, the improbable, and the unforgettable.