Stanley!

 The Stanley Cup Final becomes tonight down in North Carolina, and if you think that sounds odd you are clearly a grumblin' geezer of the liver-spotted fist-shaking sort. These are modern times, Grandpa. The Montreal Canadiens don't live here anymore.

(Although, by God, they might have. Got to the conference finals this time around, only to be erased in five games by the rampaging Carolina Hurricanes. Ah, well. Light a candle to the memory of Yvan Cournoyer, and let's move on.)

Anyway, it's the Hurricanes against the Las Vegas Golden Knights in the Final, which means Lord Stanley is going to be paraded down either Dale Earnhardt Way or the Strip when the final horn sounds. Again, this is convergence of the disharmonic sort of the grumblin' geezers, but the world keeps on turnin'. And it's not like either the 'Canes or the Golden Knights don't have at least some hockey lineage upon which to draw.

The 'Canes, after all, started life as the New England/Hartford Whalers of the WHA, which means they've been around for 54 years. And the Knights have already won one Stanley Cup (in 2023) and played in the Final another time (in their inaugural season of 2016-17). So they're bonafide, as Holly Hunter liked to say in "O Brother Where Art Thou."

The Hurricanes, too, although they haven't graced the Final since 2006, when they beat Edmonton to win the Cup. They've been a, well, hurricane this time around, however, blowing through the Eastern Conference playoffs and, from the second period of Game 1 on, outscoring the Canadiens in the conference finals 153-77. 

They score, they smother opponents in their own end, and goaltender Frederik Andersen has been a locked door between the pipes, with a miniscule 1.44 goals-against in the playoffs. So they've got that going for them.

And Vegas?

All the Golden Knights did was sweep the best team in the regular season, the Colorado Avalanche, in the conference finals. They score, they smother opponents in their own end (giving up just seven goals to the league's most potent offense in the conference finals), and their goalie, Carter Hart, ain't half bad, either.

So, there you have it: Two teams that do everything well squaring off for Stanley. May the best non-traditional hockey town win.

Preferably in seven games. Because the best of all playoffs deserves it.