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

Check out the video below as a few Carolina Hurricanes players talk after winning the Stanley Cup.

Seth Jarvis interview:

ABC11's Kate Rogerson talked with Jarvis after Canes' Stanley Cup win.

The Carolina Hurricanes won their first Stanley Cup championship in 20 years on Sunday night, using a suffocating defense in Game 6 to shut down the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 and winning three straight games of a thrilling final filled with momentum swings and spectacular offense.

Brandon Bussi, who entrance late into Game 3 helped turn around the series for Carolina, recorded his first career playoff shutout in stopping 22 shots. Jackson Blake had a goal and assist, and Taylor Hall scored just 3:47 into the game to set the tone. Nikolaj Ehlers added an empty-net goal.

• Box Score

The Golden Knights, who made an unlikely run just to reach the final, struggled badly to muster any kind of offense in Game 6 and went 18:37 between shots on goal in the second and third periods. Playing in their third Cup final, this is the first time they have been shut out.

This clinching game was what many observers expected the series to be like between the defensive-minded teams, but each side watched leads of two-plus goals disappear in the first three games.

Now, the Cup belongs to the Hurricanes, led by coach Rod Brind'Amour, who also captained Carolina to its 2006 title.

This was the first game of the series that Vegas goalie Carter Hart didn't allow four goals in a game. He finished with 20 saves.

The Hurricanes began to assume control of the series after falling behind by the score of 4-0 in Game 3. They came back force overtime, and though the Canes lost, they outplayed the Golden Knights from there on out.

Reflecting the do-or-die situation for the Golden Knights, they made several lineup changes, with Brett Howden replacing the injured William Karlsson at second-line center. Mitch Marner could have moved there, but remained at right wing.

Original Golden Knight Reilly Smith made his Cup final debut at third-line right wing and Braeden Bowman made his playoff debut at fourth-line right wing. Kaedan Korczak replaced Dyland Coghlan on the third defensive pairing.

This story will be updated.

- The Associated Press contributed.

Rod Brind'Amour knows a thing or two about how Jordan Staal is feeling. Now the Carolina Hurricanes' coach, Brind'Amour was their captain when they won the Stanley Cup two decades ago, and now Staal wears the "C."

Before the final against Vegas started, Brind'Amour was clear about one thing.

"We're not here today without Jordan Staal," he said. "I can promise you that. We're very lucky. And as a coach, you're super fortunate to have a guy like that be your leader."

The 37-year-old Staal led the Hurricanes to the second championship in franchise history by being the two-way shutdown center and faceoff ace he has been his entire NHL career. By elevating his game and leading them in goals with six in the final against the Golden Knights, Staal won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.

He is the oldest player to win the honor.

"He's always really good, but yeah, he's stepped it up at such a pivotal time," teammate Seth Jarvis said. "It's incredible to watch, and it's so much fun playing with him and being around him."

Staal is the longest-tenured player in the organization. He was also the only player on the roster with a Cup ring, from winning with the Penguins in 2009.

The 17 years in between is the longest gap between championships, breaking the record of 16 held by Chris Chelios.

"That's a lot of years," Staal said. "It's amazing. This is something I've been going after ever since we got the first one. You want to win it again and again and again. What a feeling."

Staal joined the Hurricanes in 2012 in a trade from Pittsburgh on his wedding day. His first half-dozen years with them passed without a postseason appearance.

"I don't want to say that the losing that he had to do for four, five years when he got here might have fueled him even more, but I think it did," fellow veteran Jordan Martinook said. "The fact that he's seen some pretty dark days here and then to be on the other side of it ... he stuck through it the whole time."

The past seven seasons, Staal and the Hurricanes made the playoffs but failed to reach the final. He became captain in the middle of that stretch in 2020, taking on a role once filled by Brind'Amour from 2005-10 and older brother Eric from 2010-16.

Staal took on the weight of those premature exits.

"Each scar, each moment just drives a hunger even deeper into you," Staal said. "Being a part of this core and all the scars that we've gone through just brings that care factor for each other that we want it for each other that much more."

Staal has never gotten the Selke Trophy as the league's best defensive forward, but he has been a finalist and this run shows why. He won more than 56% of his faceoffs and is so valuable on draws that he begins power plays just to get the Hurricanes the puck.

"People got to see what I've know for forever - what kind of player he is, what kind of leader he is," Brind'Amour said. "And here we go, he's finally rewarded."

Told of Brind'Amour's pre-series comment that the team would not have gotten this far without him, Staal praised his coach and downplayed changing anything in his game. The two shared a long hug on the ice in the moments after the Game 6 win.

"I'm just being me," Staal said. "I'm not really anyone different. But just my day-to-day presence is showing up and working. That's all I've done since I got here in Carolina, and being consistent with that must have been enough."

The offensive outburst against Vegas put Staal over the top for the Conn Smythe after it looked like Logan Stankoven and Taylor Hall were Carolina's front-runners. He never scored 30 goals in a season, but his six in the final put him in the record books with the likes of Hall of Famers Mario Lemieux and Mike Bossy.

"I'm not really surprised," Brind'Amour said. "You take the goals away, it'd be the same impact. It's just added that extra element."

- The Associated Press contributed.

The image of Rod Brind'Amour screaming triumphantly while raising the Stanley Cup as the Carolina Hurricanes' captain had been the franchise's defining image for the past two decades.

Now there will be another: Brind'Amour raising the Cup again, this time as the Hurricanes' coach who has made the sun-soaked Southern market his longtime home.

The Hurricanes won their second championship by beating the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 on Sunday night to close out a six-game Stanley Cup Final, adding a remarkable chapter to Brind'Amour's enduring presence with the franchise. In a region generally best known for rabid college sports rivalries, he is the embodiment of Hurricanes hockey.

He was the 35-year-old two-way center as the heart and soul of that 2006 title run, known for grinding on-ice work and weight-room training.

The owner of the retired No. 17 jersey in the Lenovo Center rafters.

The guy who proclaimed "I bleed Hurricane red" when becoming head coach of a franchise lost in a nine-year wilderness without a playoff bid.

Now he's the coach who built a perennial contender that has finally reached its zenith. He joins Toe Blake with Montreal, Hap Day with Toronto and Cooney Weiland with Boston as the only other people in NHL history to both captain and coach the same organization to a Stanley Cup.

Doing it more than a quarter-century after arriving as a player shocked to be traded to Carolina makes it only sweeter.

"I don't just wear this (Hurricanes) hat, take it off and wear someone else's the next day," Brind'Amour said in May during his eighth playoff appearance in as many seasons. "That's just not what it is. It means a little more to me because I've been here for so long. We have the roots and the history, so I'm very lucky in that way."

Brind'Amour's arrival triggered a title climb

Brind'Amour - born in the Canadian capital of Ottawa and raised in Campbell River, British Columbia - arrived in a January 2000 trade from Philadelphia. That jarring charge had an inauspicious start; he reached Raleigh amid a heavy snowstorm that had paralyzed the area.

Just two years later, Brind'Amour helped Carolina make an unexpected run to the Stanley Cup Final. Then, in the NHL's 2005 return from a season-cancelling lockout, Brind'Amour became captain as the Hurricanes beat Edmonton in seven games for his unforgettable Cup-hoisting moment.

Brind'Amour was part of another East final run in 2009 before retiring in 2010. He held a front-office role before spending seven seasons as an assistant coach and then taking over the bench in 2018.

The challenge was daunting. There was the on-ice frustration from the long playoff drought. There was also flagging fan interest.

The Hurricanes had gone from averaging 16,573 fans for regular-season home games in the 2008-09 season to as low as 11,776 by the 2016-17 season. That stood at just 12,412 the year before Brind'Amour's promotion.
How Brind'Amour revitalized the Hurricanes

Brind'Amour quickly went about building a team capable of sustained success, one with an approach in befitting his personality. Use an aggressive forecheck to win puck battles. Maintain possession and generate scoring chances to keep the pressure on in the offensive zone.

The mantra was simple: keep working, it's the only way to give yourself a chance to win.

"It's just the eight years we've been doing this Roddy," captain Jordan Staal said before Game 6 against Vegas. "It's the game we've built and it doesn't ever change."

Brind'Amour acknowledges the value of having been a player - "I have sat in their seat," he said this month - in understanding the challenges they face and how to motivate them. He also talks about leading a team that fans can be proud of with its performance and effort.

And Brind'Amour continued a set-the-example leadership style, even in his own workout habits as he pushed into his 50s. It left an impression on offseason trade acquisition K'Andre Miller; the defenseman recalled coming in early to work out and finding Brind'Amour deep into bench squats.

"I'm like, 'Who is this guy?'" Miller chuckled last month.

"It doesn't hurt that your coach is in shape like that," forward Taylor Hall said before the final. "That's just the kind of guy he is. He's a role model for us, and we kind of follow his lead."

Building for sustained success led to a second Cup title

It's all added up to the Hurricanes making the playoffs every year of Brind'Amour's tenure. They reached the East final in 2019, 2023 and 2025 before pushing past Montreal this year.

Average regular-season home attendance is roughly 18,800 for the past two seasons combined. And in 2023, the team packed nearly 57,000 fans into Carter-Finley Stadium - home to N.C. State's football team across the street from the Lenovo Center - for a Stadium Series outdoor game.

Overall, Brind'Amour has been a player or coach for 102 of the franchise's 104 playoff victories since the former Hartford Whalers relocated to North Carolina in 1997.

That now includes Brind'Amour having his name etched on the Stanley Cup for a second time.

- The Associated Press contributed.