Hurricanes-Golden Knights Game 5 takeaways, grades, questions - ESPN

We are about to enter the first elimination game of the Stanley Cup Final on the heels of Game 5, which put the Carolina Hurricanes in position to win their first championship since 2006.

It's not as if Carolina was in control from the start — the Vegas Golden Knights scored early in the first period to take a 1-0 lead — but it was all Hurricanes from there as Carolina scored the next four goals and held on for a 4-2 win.

It's wild to think that in this series we had already seen multigoal leads disappear in each of the first four games. That wasn't the case Thursday as Carolina punched in one puck after another past Carter Hart to put Vegas on the brink of a failed Cup run in its own building Sunday.

And the fact that William Karlsson, one of the Golden Knights' most important forwards, didn't return for the third period after leaving in the second because of an apparent injury will only make the task ahead more difficult for Vegas. The Golden Knights had their chances at a comeback but couldn't make good. Now the Hurricanes are a win away from their ultimate goal.

Carolina looked skittish in the opening moments of Game 5, and that led to a Nikolaj Ehlers penalty that turned into Pavel Dorofeyev's opening score less than seven minutes into the first period. Tough.

Jordan Staal, though, was ready to respond and continued turning back the clock with a sensational tying score. Carolina went into the second period fully poised and looked like a veteran team used to winning. Though it didn't capitalize on Vegas' first power-play offering in the middle frame, Andrei Svechnikov (with his first of two goals) didn't miss on the second try of the period to give Carolina an advantage it could feel good about. It was the