Hurricanes finish off Canadiens, return to Stanley Cup Final - ESPN

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Carolina Hurricanes have finally broken through their Eastern Conference finals roadblock. Now comes the chance to play for the Stanley Cup for the first time in two decades.

Taylor Hall, Logan Stankoven and Eric Robinson scored in a dominating first period that helped push the Hurricanes past the Montreal Canadiens 6-1 on Friday night, closing a five-game series that sent the Eastern Conference's top seed on to face the Vegas Golden Knights for the Cup.

Carolina opened as -155 favorites to win the Final, according to DraftKings.

Jackson Blake and Shayne Gostisbehere added second-period goals that pushed the Hurricanes to a 5-0 lead entering the final period, while Seth Jarvis scoring into an empty-netter with 3:41 left. Frederik Andersen carried a shutout until midway through the third in net.

Carolina swept through the first two rounds of the playoffs, then regrouped from a Game 1 loss to the Canadiens after an extended between-rounds break to win four straight. That included a run of 10 straight goals going back to Andrei Svechnikov's overtime winner in Game 3 before Montreal finally got on the board with Cole Caufield's power-play score at 10:50 of the third.

That made the Hurricanes the first team to reach the Stanley Cup Final with only one loss since 1983, according to SportRadar, and the only team to do so since the league went to best-of-seven series in all four postseason rounds in 1987.

It was a long-awaited moment for the franchise, which is on an eight-year run of postseason appearances under Rod Brind'Amour. The Hurricanes have been a perennial contender in the East, yet they entered this series having gone 1-12 in the Eastern Conference finals under Brind'Amour — falling in sweeps to