2006 Hurricanes-Oilers Stanley Cup Final

Lore & Background

It was Carolina's second appearance in the Finals, the other being in 2002, a loss to the Detroit Red Wings. It was Edmonton's seventh appearance in the Finals and their first since winning their fifth Stanley Cup in 1990. It was also the first (and to date only) Finals matchup between teams that entered the league in 1979.

In Their Own Story

The ice in the arena was scarred by the time the third period of Game 7 began. Puck marks crisscrossed the surface like old scars, and the boards bore the blue-black bruises of a hundred checks. Cam Ward wiped his gloves on his pant leg, his breath fogging in the cold air, and stared down the length of the rink toward the empty net. Across the ice, an Oilers forward skated back, jaw set, a thin line of blood on his cheekbone. The crowd noise was a wall of sound that vibrated in the ribs. Eric Staal carried the puck up the wing, his eyes locked on the slot, and for a moment the entire world narrowed to the space between the blue line and the net. He passed. The puck arrived. The net rippled. And the roar that followed was not a sound—it was a release, three years of it, pouring out of ten thousand throats at once.

Reader's Guide

The Hurricanes won the Southeast Division and clinched the second seed in the Eastern Conference. In the first round, they defeated the seventh-seeded Montreal Canadiens in six games. In the second round, they defeated the third-seeded New Jersey Devils in five games. In the Eastern Conference Final, the Hurricanes defeated the fourth-seeded Buffalo Sabres in seven games to make their second Stanley Cup Final in five years. The Oilers entered the playoffs as the 8th seed in the Western Conference. In the first round, they upset the Presidents' Trophy winner Detroit Red Wings in six games. They then beat the fifth-seeded San Jose Sharks in six games in the second round after trailing two games to none. In the Western Conference Final, the Oilers beat the sixth-seeded Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in five games to return to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1990. The Oilers became the first team in the history of the NHL to make it to the Stanley Cup Final as a #8 seed.

Did You Know?

• This series marked the first time that two former World Hockey Association teams played against each other for the Stanley Cup since they merged with the NHL in 1979.
• These were the first ever finals contested by two teams that had both missed the playoffs the previous season (skipping 2005 due to the lockout).
• Hurricanes head coach Peter Laviolette joined Ron Wilson as the only people to have head coached in an Olympics and Stanley Cup finals in the same year, having coached the American ice hockey team during the Torino Olymp