RALEIGH, N.C. — The night before the biggest game of his life, Jordan Martinook just tried being Dad. Like normal.
“Cooked some steaks. Got yelled at by my daughter a little bit. A lot, actually. She was yelling last night. She had some intensity,” the 797-game veteran chuckles on the morning of the Stanley Cup opener.
But his thoughts naturally drifted to puck drop. Martinook texted his agent, Jeff Helperl, just to express how excited he was.
Martinook, a father of three, talked to his kids. He told them what an “unbelievable opportunity” awaited Dad and how he would not be taking these games lightly.
“This is the biggest stage in our game,” Martinook said, following an upbeat and noisy Carolina Hurricanes morning skate. “I’ve seen people talk about ‘we’re loose.’ I don’t know if we’re loose. We’re excited, and we’re ready to roll.
“I look around at every guy in that room, and I’m just so pumped to see what they can do tonight.”
The Hurricanes’ attack is built on relentlessness and designed to force the opposition into mistakes by wearing them out or causing panic.
But coach Rod Brind’Amour’s game plan demands much of its practitioners.
“When I got here from Chicago last year, I wasn’t in skating shape enough to play the way I wanted to here. It took me a couple weeks,” Taylor Hall admits. “There’s a lot of skating in the way that we play. Now it seems like second nature. Doesn’t hurt that your coach is in shape like that.”
Logan Stankoven says the Brind’Amour pace and emphasis on all-zone aggression were the biggest adjustments he had to make when he got traded from Dallas in 2025. He figures it took him a month to acclimatize to Carolina’s systematic play.
“But you get used to it, and I love the way we play. I think it’s exciting as a player, and hopefully it’s exciting for the fans to watch,” Stankoven says.
“My motor and my energy that I bring, how I hunt pucks and the way our team is very aggressive on pucks and pressuring all over the ice, I think that’s great. It’s a fun brand of hockey to play.”
Dealing with Carolina’s swarm was not so fun for Ottawa, Philadelphia, or Montreal — all of whom got outshot, outworked and run out of the eastern bracket.
Stankoven remembers what an animal the Hurricanes were to deal with when he was on the Stars.
“It’s hard when you don’t have any time or space out there,” Stankoven says. “(Lenovo Center) is a tough building to play in, and the fans are loud. It’s a hard building to come into, and the way they play makes it tougher. I’m glad to be on this side now.”
How do the Golden Knights avoid getting overwhelmed like the Canadiens with all those pinching defencemen and backchecking forwards?
“Probably just patience, right? If you get all impatient against it, they make you pay if you start to throw pucks in the middle,” says Vegas captain Mark Stone, who watched games 4 and 5 of the Eastern Conference Final. “You got to be a little patient. You got to be OK with chipping pucks out or making simple plays. Once you start to dipsy and do stuff like that, it opens up the ice for them.
“They play hard, and they play fast, and you have to be ready.”
Three players in this series have a chance to join an elite group with a Stanley Cup win, as only eight players have won Olympic gold and the Cup in the same season.
Ken Morrow is the only American to do it, and he will be joined by either Jaccob Slavin, or Jack Eichel and Noah Hanifin.
“Yeah, it would be a pretty cool year to be able to do that,” admitted Hanifin, who said it isn’t weird at all to be playing against the team he started his career with.
“I think you just kind of have to remind yourself it’s a seven-game series, and after playing as hard as you can the first game, you need to get better every game in the series, and I feel our team’s done that this whole playoffs.”
Others in the club include Drew Doughty, Jeff Carter, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Jonathan Toews, Brendan Shanahan and Steve Yzerman.
Miller’s baby goes viral
Sportsnet’s cameras caught a beautiful moment Saturday night after the ‘Canes punched their ticket to the final.
K’Andre Miller, thwarted in Round 3 when he was a Ranger, sat on Carolina’s home bench cradling his newborn son, Kashton, and soaked it all in.
“Those are personal moments. I don’t think he wanted that out there like that, but it’s certainly a reminder of, Number 1, the growth in him,” Brind’Amour said. “Life is real. You get caught up in the game and everything, but there’s more important things. It was a touching moment, for sure.
“That stuff is special. But that’s a personal moment for him and, I think, a good reminder for all of us.”
The one lineup change for the Golden Knights from their last game is the return of defenceman Jeremy Lauzon, who slides into the third pairing with Dylan Coghlan.
“Good, solid positional defenceman who has some bite to him. He was missed,” said John Tortorella, who was without the services of Lauzon since he took a puck to the head in the opening series with Utah.
“He anchors his position, the toughest position to play defence. And I just think he’s very cerebral about it, and I just like his jam to his game.”
Barbashev – Eichel – Dorofeyev
Howden – Karlsson – Marner
Hertl – Sissons – Stone
Smith – Dowd – Kolesar
McNabb – Theodore
Hanifin – Andersson
Coghlan – Lauzon
Healthy and consistent, Carolina is rolling with the same lineup that rolled over the Habs. Thirteenth forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi has yet to participate in these playoffs:
Svechnikov – Aho – Jarvis
Hall – Stankoven – Blake
Ehlers – Staal – Martinook
Carrier – Jankowski – Robinson
Slavin – Chatfield
Miller – Walker
Gostisbehere – Nikishin