The Carolina Hurricanes are Stanley Cup champions. They closed out the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 in Game 6 at T-Mobile Arena on Sunday night, winning the series in six games and bringing the Stanley Cup to Raleigh for the second time in franchise history, and the first time in 20 years, since the only other Hurricanes team to win it did so in 2006 with Eric Staal as its centerpiece.
The captain who hoisted the Cup Sunday night was the other Staal. Jordan. Eric's younger brother, who plays center, who has been in Carolina since 2012, who watched Eric's championship banner hang in the Lenovo Center rafters for 14 years while trying to put his own name on the same trophy.
He put his name on it Sunday. And the people who vote on the Conn Smythe Trophy, given to the most valuable player of the entire postseason, voted unanimously and without much deliberation to put his name on that one too.
Jordan Staal, 37 years and 277 days old, is the oldest player in NHL history to win the Conn Smythe Trophy. He broke the record set by Tim Thomas, who won it with the Boston Bruins in 2011 at 37 years and 61 days. Staal beat that mark by 216 days.
"This is something I've been going after ever since we got the first one," Staal said, holding the Conn Smythe alongside the Cup. "You want to win it again and again and again. And what a feeling, what a battle."
The Stanley Cup Final That Put Him In The Record Books
Staal's career has been built on a specific kind of excellence that does not generate the statistics that drive Conn Smythe conversations.
He is the best defensive center in the sport at doing the things that do not show up in the scoring column, shutting down opposing centers, winning faceoffs at a rate that borders on embarrassing, taking the toughest defensive assignments with a physical presence that the most skilled forwards in the league do not enjoy encountering.
He had two goals and three assists in the first three rounds of the playoffs. Nobody was thinking Conn Smythe. The trophy was belonging to Logan Stankoven or Taylor Hall or Seth Jarvis, players having spectacular offensive postseasons. Then the Stanley Cup Final began.
Staal scored a goal in Game 1. He scored a goal in Game 2. He scored a goal in Game 3. He scored a goal in Game 4.
He scored a goal in Game 5. Five consecutive goals to open the Stanley Cup Final, a feat last accomplished by Jean Beliveau in 1956. He added his sixth in Game 6 to close it out. Six goals in the Stanley Cup Final.
From a 37-year-old who had not eclipsed 40 points in a season since 2017-18. Against the Vegas Golden Knights and Jack Eichel, who is one of the best centers in hockey and who spent the entire series being made to look like someone Jordan Staal had decided not to allow to do anything. Eichel: zero goals and two assists at five-on-five in the entire series.
Rod Brind'Amour had known this was coming even when nobody else could see it. Before the Final began, he was direct:
"We're not here today without Jordan Staal. I can promise you that. We're very lucky. And as a coach, you're super fortunate to have a guy like that be your leader."
After it ended, "Everyone got to see what I've known forever, what kind of player he is, and leader."
The Records That Followed
The Conn Smythe is the headline record but it is not the only one. Staal also set the NHL record for the longest gap between Stanley Cup championships, 17 years, from his first Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009 to Sunday's victory with Carolina.
The previous record was 16 years, held by Chris Chelios, who won in 1986 and 2002.
He is the first player in NHL history to have scored in the first five games of a Stanley Cup Final since Jean Beliveau did it in 1956.
He is the second Hurricane ever to win the Conn Smythe, Cam Ward, the 22-year-old goalie who was the backbone of the 2006 championship team, won it that year. Staal is the first skater in franchise history to receive it.
At 20 years old, he won his first Cup in Pittsburgh. At 37, he won his second in the city where his brother's championship banner has been hanging for two decades. The franchise that hosted one Staal family member's championship has now hosted the other's.
The 2026 Hurricanes, going 16-3 in the playoffs, the fewest losses for a Cup champion since Edmonton went 16-2 in 1988, did it the way Brind'Amour's teams have always done it, defense first, depth everywhere, the captain setting the standard.
Brandon Bussi And The Perfect Ending
The shutdown game in which Staal suffocated Eichel needed a goalie to complete it, and the goalie was Brandon Bussi, who was on his way to Charlotte to play for the AHL affiliate of the Florida Panthers on the day the Hurricanes claimed him off waivers in October 2025.
Eight months later he shut out the Vegas Golden Knights in the game that won the Stanley Cup.
Between the second and third periods of Game 6, Vegas went nearly 19 minutes without a shot on goal. Jaccob Slavin, Brind'Amour's elite defensive defenseman, had been one of the quieter but most important Hurricanes throughout the playoffs.
Bussi stopped everything he needed to stop. Staal scored his sixth goal of the Final. The Hurricanes won 3-0 and the 2026 Stanley Cup is going to Raleigh.
"I'm proud of him," Brind'Amour said of Staal. "And I'm proud that he was able to do that in front of the whole hockey world."
The whole hockey world watched. Jordan Staal fell face-first on the ice after scoring the game winner in Game 4, the falling-down backhander, and celebrated the same way he celebrates everything, by letting the moment be what it is without trying to make it bigger than it already was.
The Conn Smythe and the Stanley Cup are bigger than any individual performance. He won both anyway, at 37, with his brother's banner watching from the rafters of the building back home.