HURRICANE FORCE: Canes blank Vegas 3-0, win 2nd Stanley Cup title | Live Updates

Taylor Hall has the Hurricanes up in a hurry.

His blast from the left side past Carter Hart puts Carolina up 1-0 with less than 4 minutes gone in the first period.

Long way to go but the Canes have to be feeling pretty good.

The goal was Hall's seventh of the playoffs.

The narrative for the Hurricanes entering the playoffs was whether they would finally break through and win the Eastern Conference after coming so close in recent years.

Now the question is whether Carolina will close the deal and win the Stanley Cup.

That answer could come Sunday night when the Hurricanes take a 3-2 series lead into their game at Vegas, facing a Golden Knights team that held the Cup aloft just three years ago.

Should the Hurricanes prevail, it will be their second Cup and first since winning it all 20 years ago when current coach Rod Brind'Amour captained that club.

He has kept the Hurricanes competitive, but as well as they played in the regular season, they couldn't get out of the East. They lost in the conference final two of the past three years before finally breaking through this year with a five-game series victory over Montreal.

Now Carolina is 60 minutes from potentially winning it all, but the Hurricanes do have some margin for error. They can lose and still win the Cup on home ice Wednesday in a winner-take-all Game 7.

Vegas coach John Tortorella boldly pronounced after Thursday's 4-2 loss in Game 5 that he was leaving his clothes at his North Carolina team hotel in anticipation of a return trip.

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Golden Knights coach John Tortorella is sticking with Carter Hart against the Hurricanes even though he is the first goalie to give up four goals in each of the first five games of a Stanley Cup Final.

The teams meet in Game 6 on Sunday, and the Stanley Cup will be in T-Mobile Arena with Carolina up 3-2 and having a chance to close out the best-of-seven series over Vegas.

Tortorella, who previously coached Hart in Philadelphia, has been perhaps his staunchest defender.

"Because I know him," Tortorella said Saturday. "I know there's a better game in him. I've seen it throughout the playoffs. Yeah, I think he's a very good goalie. We've got to do a better job around him, too. You can look at the numbers, and you guys (media), that's what you do. You spit out those numbers, but I've got to look at things differently and watch the play going on around him and what type of goals are being scored."

Click on Chasing the Cup and get live real-time updates during the game.

The Carolina Hurricanes had spent the NHL playoffs waiting for their power play to get going, along with top-line performers Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho.

They had spent the first four games of the Stanley Cup Final being outplayed in critical second-period sequences.

On Thursday night during Game 5, it all came together, aligning to bring the Hurricanes within a victory of winning the Cup.

Svechnikov scored twice and Aho added a second-period goal in a breakout offensive game for both, helping the Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2 for a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Captain Jordan Staal found the net again for the fifth straight game in this series after Vegas had taken a 1-0 first-period lead, while Brandon Bussi finished with 23 saves in his second career postseason start.

"I liked our effort for sure, and I hope we're getting better," coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "I think there's certain areas of our game that are starting to look a lot like we need it to look. But I do think there's still another level that we're going to need to get to find that next one."

Game 6 is Sunday night in Las Vegas, with the Hurricanes playing for the chance to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time since Brind'Amour captained them to the title in 2006.

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ESPN contributed to this report