Stanley Cup Final: Golden Knights' resiliency shows in another comeback win
Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz react to the Las Vegas Golden Knights comeback win over the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 1 of the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV .
Video Transcript
Carolina goes up two-nothing, then Vegas answers with three straight goals.
Then we bounce, goal to goal to goal to goal.
Woo!
Five to four Vegas wins.
Caroline, this was absolutely everything the league could ever dream of in a first game in a cup series.
I think my biggest takeaway from last night was the resiliency of the Vegas Golden Knights, the confidence that this team is playing with.
Vegas was not the best team by any stretch of the imagination in the regular season.
It's the reason why they fired their coach in the middle, you know, toward the end of the year.
It's the reason why John Tortorella came in for the post-season.
But being the best team in the regular season doesn't matter in, in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
It doesn't matter in the Stanley Cup finals.
All that matters is how hot you are, how hot you're playing, and there's no other team that's playing hotter than the Vegas Golden Knights.
Vegas has been beating the best of the best, and they've been beating them handily through all of this.
And part of it is because it's a roster filled with superstars.
Part of it is because it's a coach that's absolutely come in and found the right pulse of this team.
I, I, you see it here.
It has 680 during the winning percent- or during the regular season for a seven-game winning streak.
It's the toughest strength of schedule for any team during a seven nothing stretch in the playoffs in NHL history.
Vegas was an underdog against Carolina, but when you looked at the odds of a sweep, it was astronomical.
They come into this series and everybody says, "Yeah, but now they're taking on Carolina."
And early in this game, speed of Carolina was too much for Vegas to handle, but they didn't get overwhelmed.
I gotta give Tortorella credit.
You mentioned his speech.
They showed this on the broadcast.
Down two-nothing, he went to the bench and he said, "Guys, there's plenty of hockey left.
We're gonna stay calm.
We're gonna play our game.
We're not gonna go east west," meaning they weren't gonna throw the puck back and forth.
They were gonna go forward.
They were gonna continue to press.
It's exactly what they did, and before you know it, they scored a goal.
And once it was 2-1, everything felt different.
This is a statement to the way that this roster is built.
This is a statement to the confidence this roster has.
It's a statement to Torts and the job that he's done.
