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  "path": "/in-unprecedented-development-carolina-wins-normal-game",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-12T13:02:47.000Z",
  "site": "https://defector.com",
  "tags": [
    "NHL",
    "2026 nhl playoffs",
    "2026 stanley cup final",
    "carolina hurricanes",
    "nhl playoffs",
    "vegas golden knights",
    "Erling Haaland"
  ],
  "textContent": "Well, it had to happen eventually. We'd been putting it off and pushing it back and wallowing earhole-deep in the adrenaline rush of it all, bouncing from Las Vegas to San Antonio to Raleigh to Manhattan in a poker game in which we'd finally reached the rarefied land of the eight-bet, but in our vacant, decrepit, spider-encrusted souls we all knew it would end up here: A normal game, played normally, with normal deeds, normal screeds and a normal result. Hardly seemed worth it in the end. Then again, after 10 full days of increasingly preposterous in-play behaviors and performances by the Golden Knights, Spurs, Hurricanes, and Knicks, something and someone had to give. And Thursday night, in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final, that something and someone was the Knights.\n\nCarolina slowly but surely chokeslammed Vegas, 4-2, by playing sharp but thrill-free hockey that left nothing for the perpetually dissatisfied. After ceding the first period to Vegas—a first for the slow-starting Knights—the Canes seized the second, also a novel development, then took a two-goal lead and held it. They finally won a second period. Their best players, Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho, were finally their best players. The better team during the run of play won as they should, in regulation, and comfortably.\n\nNot that there weren't moments of \"Well, ain't that a hoot?\" Erling Haaland, the world's most lethal striker, took an evening away from the Norwegian World Cup camp because he'd heard that American playoff games are drunk. Carolina's newbie goaltender Brandon Bussi burnished his legend as the new-age mini-version of Ken Dryden by coming from nowhere to give the Canes a suddenly clear advantage in net. They gave up three power-play opportunities to the Knights, all because they kept shooting the puck into the crowd. And most ridiculous of all, ABC's P.K. Subban maintained his place as America's human rummage sale, using Cam Newton’s cast-offs to distract us from the fact that his next observation of substance will give him an even two.",
  "title": "In Unprecedented Development, Carolina Wins Normal Game"
}