The Knights swept the President’s Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Finals, and will play for the Stanley Cup for the third time in their nine-year history starting on Tuesday night in Carolina. The Hurricanes, who also likely appeared on the majority of your lists I bet, polished off Montreal on Friday night in dominating fashion, to reach the Finals for the first time since winning the Cup in 2006.
This may be the most unwatchable Stanley Cup Final in history.
Vegas got into the playoffs by winning the weak Pacific Division with 95 points. Their 39 wins would not have been enough to get them into the playoffs at all in the East, and if the league had a proper 1-vs-8 seeding, the Golden Knights would have been the 4-seed in the Western Conference. Vegas ran through Utah in six in the first round, Anaheim in six in the second round, and then the sweep of Colorado. Most amazingly was the sudden surge after firing head coach Bruce Cassidy with just eight games left in the regular season. Cassidy was replaced with John Tortorella, who guided Vegas to a 7-0-1 record, edging Edmonton by two points to win the Pacific Division.
Yet again Vegas entered the playoffs with the highest salary in the NHL, thanks in part to a sign-and-trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs that saw them land Mitch Marner. Vegas promptly signed Marner to an eight-year, $96 million contract extension. Marner leads all players in the playoffs with 21 points, and is trailed by teammate Jack Eichel with 18. After not being able to get past the second round more than once as a member of the Leafs, Marner sits four wins from a championship. Remember that Eichel was part of the 2023 Stanley Cup Championship team with the Knights after his forced escape from Buffalo as their captain the year before.
So what makes this Vegas team so much more unlikeable than in years past? Is it Marner AND Eichel both going for a title after all those years with their original franchises? Is it the fact that Tortorella has been living off his 2004 Stanley Cup Championship with Tampa Bay for over two decades, including a few years of being a really bad analyst on television? Is it the years of circumventing the salary cap by stashing players on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) until the playoffs began; so much so that the league had to establish “The Vegas Rule” when negotiating the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)?
“The Vegas Rule,” as most call it, is a clause in the CBA that teams must be complicit to the salary cap once the playoffs begin as well. A few years ago, defensemen Mark Stone was kept on LTIR by Vegas, and returned early in their playoff run, putting Vegas nearly $7 million over the salary cap with the team on the ice. Currently defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is on LTIR to the tune of $8.8 million for this season, but was ruled out for the year the day before free agency started last summer. Pietrangelo opted to rehab various injuries, most notably his hip, rather than undergo career-threatening femoral reconstruction. If Pietrangelo would have been eligible to return at any point in these playoffs, Vegas would have been required to sit enough players to make up his near $9 million salary. The Knights did it in back-to-back years with defenseman Mark Stone and center William Karlsson.
Vegas is already projected to only have $4.6 million in cap space once free agency opens next month after the Finals are completed, second worst only to Colorado at $2.98 million.
Tortorella is a story in and of itself. He became the first head coach in history to sweep a President’s Trophy-winning team twice in the playoffs since the trophy was first awarded in the 1985-86 season. The sweep of Colorado also extended the “President’s Trophy Curse,” where the league’s top team in the regular season has still not won the NHL’s greatest prize since the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013. To take it a step further, that same Blackhawk team was the last President’s Trophy winner to make the final round. Colorado won the award during the Covid-shorted 2020-21 season, and lost in the second round…to Vegas.
Despite being outright fired, the Golden Knights have refused to allow Cassidy to interview with other teams, as his contract was not set to expire until after next season. News outlets in Edmonton reported that Vegas denied requests between both the Oilers and Los Angeles Kings to speak with Cassidy about their head coaching vacancies for next season. Keep in mind that both Vancouver and Toronto also have openings, but they may get the same answer. The Canucks, Oilers, and Kings are all in the Pacific Division, and Vegas would really love to stick it to Toronto by not allowing Cassidy the opportunity to fill their vacancy whether or not they win the Cup after the Marner deal.
Now we have to discuss the elephant in the room…Vegas goaltender Carter Hart. The 28-year-old went 11-3-3 in the regular season after being signed in October, and is 12-4 in these playoffs. Hart supplanted Adin Hill as the starter, despite only being on a two-year, $4 million contract. This stems in the wake of Hart being acquitted along with five other professional players in the Hockey Canada sexual assault scandal.
Hart was one of the players named in a 2018 sexual assault claim by a woman that was filed in April of 2022. The scandal caused major advertisers such as Canadian Tire, Tim Horton’s, Scotiabank, Telus, and General Motors Canada to suspend all partnerships with Hockey Canada. Public opinion was even worse, as many felt the case was swept under the rug for the sake of having key players available for international competitions such as the World Junior Championships. The case was tried in April 2025, with Justice Maria Carroccia declaring a mistrial, then dismissing the jury on the second trial, citing prejudice against all five defendants. There were unsubstantiated reports that defense attorneys attempted to influence or bully jurors. Carroccia acquitted the players in May of 2025 after overseeing the trial on her own, citing the plaintiff’s evidence not to be credible or reliable enough to justify the charges.
Ask anyone who has ever been accused of, tried for, or acquitted of the same level of charges if that cloud ever disappears from over your head or reputation.
Listen, Vegas has found a way around the system since their first day as a member of the NHL. Either way the NHL shot themselves in the foot. If Vegas wins the Stanley Cup, the narrative is that the league closed the loophole too little too late for Vegas to be in this position. If Carolina wins the Cup, there is an expectation that the league needs to re-evaluate the playoff format where a team with the 13th-best record in the league got a favorable draw of being in a weak division, and rode it to an appearance in the Finals.
Either way, there is no Canadian representative, and the former star of their most high-profile franchise is one series away from getting the one trophy that has eluded that franchise for almost 60 years, and the entire country for over 30 of them.
-JC24