Golden Knights beat Hurricanes to take Game 1 of Stanley Cup final

Tomas Hertl took a backhand pass from Colton Sisson and beat Frederik Anderson from the slot with 3:24 left in the third period, lifting the Vegas Golden Knights past the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 in Tuesday night's opener of the Stanley Cup final.

Hertl's finish off Sisson's feed from the right faceoff circle broke a 4-4 tie and pushed the Golden Knights ahead in an entertaining back-and-forth start on the sport's biggest stage. It marked Vegas' seventh straight win of the playoffs, starting with the last two games of the six-game second-round series against Anaheim and then the shocking four-game sweep of the Presidents' Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche.

That series included Vegas erasing a 3-0 deficit to take Game 3, and now the Golden Knights have followed by rallying from another multigoal deficit — this time 2-0 in the opening period — against the team that finished second only to the Avs in the regular season.

Game 2 of the best-of-seven series is Thursday in Raleigh, N.C., with Vegas already having taken home-ice away from the Hurricanes as it chases a second Cup title in four seasons.

Shea Theodore, Ivan Barbashev, William Karlsson and Brett Howden also scored for Vegas, with Howden's playoff-leading 11th score giving the Golden Knights a 4-3 lead just 1:21 into the third period. Carter Hart finished with 23 saves.

Nikolaj Ehlers scored twice for the Hurricanes, the first coming 25 seconds into the game when he got loose and a rush and blasted one past Hart from the left side on the game's first shot. He followed with a breakaway that gave Carolina a 2-0 lead and sent a charged home crowd into an eruption in the team's first Stanley Cup Final game in two decades.

Jordan Staal and Shayne Gostisbehere each scored