Mark Stone urges patience as Golden Knights Vs Hurricanes open Game 1

Golden Knights vs Hurricanes opened with Mark Stone telling Vegas to stay patient against Carolina’s pressure in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Stanley Cup Final Game 1 matchup put the Golden Knights in a building where the Hurricanes had already shown how hard they can make life on visitors. Stone’s message was simple: make clean plays or pay for it.

Stone Sets the Vegas Plan

“Probably just patience, right? If you get all impatient against it, they make you pay if you start to throw pucks in the middle,” Stone said. “You got to be a little patient. You got to be OK with chipping pucks out or making simple plays.”

He added, “They play hard, and they play fast, and you have to be ready.” Stone watched Games 4 and 5 of the Eastern Conference Final before the opener, and his read matched the challenge Carolina has built through pace and pressure.

That challenge has been obvious in the bracket. Ottawa, Philadelphia, and Montreal were outshot, outworked, and run out of the eastern bracket by Carolina, a path that showed how quickly the Hurricanes can tilt a series when opponents try to force the issue.

Carolina’s Pressure Game

Logan Stankoven said the pace and all-zone aggression of Rod Brind’Amour’s system were the biggest adjustments he had to make after being traded from Dallas in 2025. He said it took him a month to acclimatize to Carolina’s systematic play, and called it “a fun brand of hockey to play.”

“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,” Stankoven said. He also said, “It’s hard when you don’t have any time or space out there,” and called Lenovo Center “a tough building to play in, and the fans are loud.”

Taylor Hall described a similar adjustment after arriving from Chicago last year. “When I got here from Chicago last year, I wasn’t in skating shape enough to play the way I wanted to here,” he said. “It took me a couple weeks,” before adding, “There’s a lot of skating in the way that we play.”

Martinook’s Final Morning

Jordan Martinook brought the personal edge of the opener into the room. The 797-game veteran and father of three said he cooked steaks the night before and got yelled at by his daughter, then texted his agent, Jeff Helperl, because he was excited about the Stanley Cup opener.

“Cooked some steaks. Got yelled at by my daughter a little bit. A lot, actually. She was yelling last night. She had some intensity,” Martinook said. After the Hurricanes morning skate, he called the Final the biggest stage in hockey and said, “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.”

He finished by saying, “I look around at every guy in that room, and I’m just so pumped to see what they can do tonight.” For Vegas, the task was already clear: survive the first wave, keep the puck out of the middle, and make Carolina play without the easy turnovers it has used to wear teams down.