We failed a lot this year in trying to pick each round of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, and this Sunday Surmising is a tad bit anticlimactic for us, as a result. We’d still like to know what kind of voodoo is being used in Las Vegas, as the Golden Knights somehow swept the most dominant team in the league to get to the Cup Finals for the third time in the team’s nine-year existence—each time with a different head coach on the bench. There is just no rationale way to explain how those four games went down.

So, now Vegas faces the Carolina Hurricanes in the Finals, with each team going for its second NHL championship. This is the Hurricanes’ eighth consecutive year in the postseason under Head Coach Rod Brind’Amour, and this is the first time they’ve reached this stage. Meanwhile, the Golden Knights fired the coach that won their Cup in 2023 with eight games to go in the regular season, and somehow the team has ridden that sudden change to another Western Conference title. It doesn’t compute.

Here we go again …

Carolina Hurricanes vs. Vegas Golden Knights: All the mathematical and sabermetric advantages go to the Eastern Conference champs here. They have a nine-win advantage in regulation victories; a 41-goal advantage in scoring differential; and a 0.56-goal advantage on a per-game basis. Keep in mind the Colorado Avalanche had even larger edges in those same statistical categories, and somehow the Golden Knights rolled through them by a combined 14-7 margin in four games. We’re at a loss to explain it, yo.

The issue here is Vegas didn’t look like world beaters against Utah in the first round, needing six games to pull off that upset. The Golden Knights then needed six games to take out the Anaheim Ducks in the second round, a team that never should have been there themselves. Dare we say Vegas has been lucky? Well, sure, you need some luck to get this far, usually. Carolina got some luck with the Montréal Canadiens beating the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round somehow. Luck is often a huge factor.

Yet luck can be created via preparation, and in addition to being lucky, you have to be good enough to take advantage of that luck when it presents itself. That is what the Golden Knights have done, and to a lesser extent, it’s what the Hurricanes did, too, in not having to face the Lightning in the postseason—and beating whatever team showed up in front of them. Now? Well, we can’t predict luck, and we’re not going to try, so we have to stick with the math instead of the guesswork. Carolina in five games.