Is quality of competition a concern for Hurricanes heading into Stanley Cup Final?
The Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes are set to square off in the Stanley Cup Final, with Game 1 on the slate for Tuesday night in Raleigh.
While the Hurricanes ran through the Eastern Conference, dropping just one game while dispatching the Ottawa Senators (99 points), Philadelphia Flyers (98 points) and Montreal Canadiens (106 points), the ease with which they’ve done so has many wondering if Carolina is truly just that good or if they just haven’t faced a team of the caliber of Vegas, which looked good but not great through the first two rounds before demolishing the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed whether or not Hurricanes fans should be concerned about the level of competition their team has faced heading into the final round.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Well and especially surprising, like if you were to lay out to somebody at the start of the playoffs, the path that Carolina had, and listen, at the time, Ottawa was the sexy underdog pick. A lot of people had them in their brackets, so I don’t really want to sit here and say Carolina’s just doing what we expected them to do, because a lot of brackets were busted in Round 1, but if you look at what Ottawa eventually ended up giving them in terms of not a lot of trouble. Philly in Round 2, you kind of shrug at that opponent. Montreal in Round 3, well they were kind of just running out of gas. They’re still a young team. Carolina’s path wasn’t all that difficult, and I think that will lead to a lot of conversation when people are making their predictions. They’ll say Carolina, did they have to beat another truly elite team? I don’t think so. Whereas you can’t look at Vegas and point to their conference final, and they were pretty big underdogs, and they make quick work of the Avs. So where do you come out on that whole quality of competition debate? Do you factor that in at all when you’re making your prediction here for this series?
Carter Hutton: I guess so, in a sense, but not really. Again, this isn’t the Atlantic that they just beat. They beat the Montreal Canadiens. For Carolina, they felt like a wounded duck at that point. Two series in, tired, hanging on by a thread. But for Vegas, they beat a good, not totally healthy Colorado Avalanche team. I think I just rely on the structure of the way they play. I think that’ll be an interesting take here, as we look at Carolina who plays man-on-man and the Vegas Golden Knights who’ve done such a good job under John Tortorella of being more structured and predictable.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…