Hurricanes Win The Cup And Torts Burns The Biscuit (Show 11)

Sean is here to breakdown games four, five, and six of the Stanley Cup Final. How did Carolina impose their will? What mistakes were too costly for Vegas? The John Tortorella interim hire and then parting of ways is twice as bizarre as we thought. And he completely burnt the biscuit in this series. It's Biscuit Breakdown! Consider yourself served!

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Transcript

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It's time for biscuit breakdown, where hockey is the only thing on the menu. And welcome back, everybody, whoever you root for, wherever you live, whenever it is, it's time for biscuit breakdown. I'm your host Sean, and we are officially done with the 2025-2026 season, the Stanley Cup, awarded to the Carolina Hurricanes. Before we get into all of that, be sure to follow me wherever you get your podcast. I would love it if you could follow the show. Also, if you'd be so kind as to give a five-star rating and review, that really helps me out. If you'd like to follow me on Instagram, I am biscuitbreakdown, Twitter, Biscuit Breakdown without the O. Or you can send me an email, biscuitbreakdownpod at gmail.com. Alright, let's dive right in here. The last show we talked about games one, two, and three. Turns out there was three more after that. So Carolina took care of business and won the cup in game six. Before we get into the final game, we'll go in sequential order here as best as possible. Game four, Carolina, credit to them. They had the game that they really needed to have in order to tie up the series. They were down two to one in the series heading into game four. And I gotta apologize. I was wrong again. I said on the previous show that the Hurricane should stick with their goalie Freddie Anderson because he had been playing well in the playoffs. He got them to that point. He's their veteran. They have a rookie backup who might be nervous heading in there. And uh turns out that I was wrong about basically all of that because they went to the rookie, Brandon Bussey, in game four, um, as their starting goalie, and Freddie Anderson was scratched, he wasn't even dressed as the backup. So that was a bit of a head scratcher, everybody was confused about that, and then as the couple days went on, people started to speculate if he um got a concussion in the middle of game three, and that's why he didn't finish game three, that's why they didn't play him in game four, because again in game five he didn't play, he didn't play in game six, it was busy for the rest of the way. Um so it was really weird that they wouldn't have him at least as a backup. So people are speculating that he had a concussion and they didn't want to put him in there, obviously, because that takes time to heal from. So I think I deserve a little bit of a pass there. It was sort of an injury thing that he didn't play, although it was the perfect timing. I mean, there's never a good time for a head injury, but that could not have been more perfect timing for the Hurricanes who were looking for any excuse to put in the rookie stud, and it turned out to be the right move because Brandon Bussey came in there and he played well in games four, five, and six, as we'll get into, and it made uh the Hurricanes champions, basically. So game four, they did what they had to do. They won the game five to three in Vegas to tie up the series two to two, and the most memorable um part of game four was when Jordan Stahl, the Hurricane's captain, scored on the backhand in front of the net as he was falling over himself, basically. So he's falling backwards to basically land on his butt, but he had enough wherewithal to hit the puck towards the net on the backhand in a desperation attempt because he knew Carter Hart was out of position, and the puck fluttered in over his glove to score a goal for the Hurricanes. And Jordan Stahl was basically on fire this whole series. He scored a goal in the first five games of the series, six goals total. Um no 37-year-old has ever done that in the Stanley Cup final. And um basically the series headed back to Raleigh for Game Five, tied two to two, and the Hurricanes once again took care of business four to two in that game behind their home crowd, and you could tell that in game five they basically had figured out Vegas. Um they really rounded into form and were limiting Vegas' ability to get shots on net, and they started to look like their typical hurricane selves, and Vegas was getting frustrated and didn't have much answers. Um game five ended four to two. The biggest takeaway that I have from that is basically when Sebastian Aho scored the best goal from that game. Um it was a beautiful pass from Sean Walker, his defensive teammate, um, who was on the blue line. He sends it basically on a diagonal across the offensive zone. Aho lets it bounce off of his right skate blade and then corrals it right to his stick blade and then sends a beautiful shot high to the top of the net, a true tap cheddar biscuit. We love a tap cheddar biscuit here at biscuit breakdown, and it was honestly a gorgeous goal, and when I saw it, I literally said, Wow. Alright, because I knew that that was a beauty, and a lot of other people agreed. And once again, the skill level of these athletes, the hand eye coordination, the ability to control their body in awkward positions, always maintain their balance, use their hand eye coordination. It's just insane. So uh, you know, you just gotta tip your cap, sit back and enjoy the show sometimes, even if it's not your teams that you typically root for. And so the series was heading back to Vegas with the Hurricanes now leading three games to two, and the Vegas head coach John Tortorella made an absolutely dumb, boneheaded, crazy, insane, stupid comment after game five. He said, We'll be back here. I'm leaving my clothes in the hotel. That is just completely insane bulletin board material that he gave to the Hurricanes, as if they needed any more motivation to finally get over the hump and win the championship. They've been knocking on the door, um, getting stuck in the conference finals the past few years, and really obviously want to win to, you know, become champions and also shut everyone up who's been um, you know, basically busting their chops y all these years, saying they could never win the big one. Um so to say something like that, that you're gonna be back there for game seven and you're gonna leave your clothes in the hotel because you're so confident is really, really stupid to do as a head coach, player, um, anybody that has any effect on the series. Because I know for sure the Hurricanes heard about that and then used it as extra motivation. So Sunday night rolls around and it's time for game six, and four minutes into game six, Taylor Hall scores off the rush on a shot that was decent, but should have been saved by Carter Hart, and once again the Hurricanes are off and running with a one-nothing lead early in the game, and that was basically the worst case scenario for the Vegas Golden Knights. It took the crowd out of it. I'm sure it planted a little seed of doubt in the back of their minds, and once again it just highlighted John Tortarella's stubbornness to not switch up the goalies and go to Aiden Hill, the backup for the Golden Knights. He was asked about it after game five if he would switch it up, and he said that's the stupidest question, or he said that's one of the stupidest questions I've ever heard. When really it's not, it was a legitimate um question because Carter Hart was not playing well in the final series. He's actually the first goalie to ever give up four goals in each of the first five games of the Stanley Cup final, and I know it's not all on him. Vegas should have played better defensively, but sometimes you just need your goalie to bail your ass out, and he was not bailing anyone out, he was bailing on everything he should have been stopping. It was not pretty for him back there, and he should have saved um a catchable shot from Taylor Hall four minutes in to give his team confidence, and he did exactly the opposite. They were down one nothing. His confidence was shaky, and not a good situation for Vegas. So they went on the power play. Vegas did ten minutes left in the first period, and then during that power play, one of their guys, Tomash Hurdle, makes a dumb mistake and gets a face-off violation by using his hand to win the face-off. So that takes away their power play, puts it to four on four. Basically another boneheaded mistake, a true vibe killer for Vegas. Um later on in the game, Brett Howden for Vegas was stopped on yet another breakaway that Carolina gave up, but that's kind of the difference that Brandon Bussey had been providing is that he was a force of stability in net for them. He stood tall and he came up big when he needed to. So that helped Carolina's case, obviously. And then later on in the second period, Hart made a great save on Andre Svechnikov of the Hurricanes, but later on in the game on a replay, they showed that the shot actually would have gone wide. They showed it from a different angle, so it wasn't as miraculous as it looked originally, and they actually took the shot away from the stat sheet, so technically Hart didn't even get credited with a save despite diving back into the net because he was behind the net. Um sort of a crazy play, but it ended up being basically a nothing burger. Um we all thought at the time that maybe it would be able to swing Vegas back into the game, give them a little momentum to build off of, but that was not the case. Basically, the second half of the game was boring as hell. Carolina just completely locked down Vegas, shut things down, made things difficult for them, made them go 200 feet. Vegas had no answers. They were just caught in a complete shitstorm of torrential rain and wind, and they had no answers. Vegas was down 2-0 with about I think they I think it was like three and a half minutes they pulled their goalie to get a sixth attacker out there, and with about two minutes left, Jack Eichel, their best center, had a shot go off the crossbar. Um so it just wasn't Vegas' night, just wasn't Vegas' time to win the championship. Shortly after that, Nicolaj Ehlers hits another empty netter to put the Keynes up three to nothing, and that was all she wrote. The party was on for the Carolina Hurricanes and their coaching staff and their trainers and their owners and the wives and children, and all the people back in Raleigh who were either watching at the Lenovo Center, they had a jam-packed house at an empty rink watching on the Jumbotron, or all the people at home watching, or at the bars, wherever, all across this great land. It was Carolina's time. And it was honestly quite shocking that Vegas got shut out at home in a Stanley Cup final game, a game they needed to win, otherwise they were eliminated and they couldn't do anything about it. An emphatic statement win for the Hurricanes. Jordan Stahl, their captain, was awarded the con Smythe for MVP with his six goals in the final. Just an amazing performance by him, plus all the face-offs and leadership that he provides on the bench to the guys. Um I think they said his face-off percentage in the Stanley Cup final was sixty-eight percent, which is just bananas. The guy was controlling the puck, being a defensive force, um, and if your team is starting with the puck always off a face-off, you're gonna have more time of possession, which is obviously gonna increase your chance of winning. So all around, he played a huge part in their victory. He also went to set the record for oldest person to receive the Consmyth, and he also set the record for largest gap in between winning the Stanley Cup. So um he went seventeen seasons in between winning the cup. He won it when he was twenty years old with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009, and then he won it um, you know, the other night when he was thirty-seven years old. So a 17 season gap in between raising the cup, pretty crazy. There was also a couple of other stats that I saw this week that were really um surprising that I wanted to share on here. The streak of no team having any players to score a hundred plus points in the regular season and win the cup is still alive, and that dates back to two thousand nine, when Evgeny Malkin had over a hundred points and they won the Stanley Cup. So that was very sh shocking. Um I would have figured, you know, in that seventeen year gap, that there would definitely be a team that won the Stanley Cup that had a player with at least a hundred points in the regular season on their team, points being goals and assists combined. Um so the fact that no winning team has had a hundred point score very, very surprising. Another interesting stat I saw this week was that the streak of no team having a player making more than ten million dollars has ever won the Stanley Cup as well. So Mitch Marner is making twelve million dollars for Vegas, and um the Hurricanes have no players over ten million dollars. Their highest player is getting paid nine point seven five million dollars, and that just speaks to the idea that if you have someone on your team that is taking up too much of the salary cap, it affects you in other areas because you um you know have players that are not making as much, which are most most likely not as skilled. So basically, if you spread out the wealth of your team and have a lot of players that are good, great, and know one superstar that's taking up too much money, you have money to spend on a lot of other players, and you could have a more well-balanced team. And so far in the salary cap era that has remained true. And lastly, speaking of Mitch Marner, it's a little bit um awkward, I don't know if that's the right word, but back when he was on Toronto, I think two years ago, it was rumored that they tried to trade him to Carolina, and he turned down that trade because he had a no-move clause, so he had the right to say no, and he said no. And, you know, look now, he could have been on that team, possibly winning the cup. Obviously, if he's on that team, they don't make some other moves, and you don't really know what would have happened, but maybe he would have been on the other side of this and helping them win the Stanley Cup and be lifting that trophy at the end of the day. You never know. And lastly, we gotta get into our burnt biscuit segment. The burnt biscuit is going to John Tortorella, head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights, now former head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights, because it came out today that he will not be returning next year as the head coach. Um so really a bizarre situation. He came in with eight games left in the regular season, they get hot, they get into the playoffs when things were looking murky, they go on this magical run to the final, they run into a shitstorm, like I said, in the Carolina Hurricanes, and they got beat, they didn't deserve to win. He is not returning as the head coach they announced today. I don't know if that was his decision or the team's decision or both of their decisions, but sort of a crazy situation that we've never seen before. But the reason that he burnt the biscuit is because he did not make enough good adjustments in the finals. He had a couple of bad line adjustments, he was stubborn and decided to just ride with Carter Hart down into the bottom of that basin, and there was nothing good at the bottom. He could have put in Aiden Hill, their backup, to try to switch up the vibe in game four or game five or game six. I mean, come on, man. He just stuck with this guy, and they both just crashed and burned, basically. And the final nail in the coffin was the whole I'm leaving my clothes in Raleigh comment, we'll be back here. That just blew up in his face. Really stupid bulletin board material, so John Tortarella, you have officially burnt the biscuit. And credit to the Carolina Hurricanes social media team for roasting him on social media. They said the other day we'll send him to ya. Might take a few days though. A little busy. And what I thought when I heard that was Boom roasted, as Michael Scott would say from the office. And that's gonna do it for our show today. If you enjoyed the show, please send it to a hockey friend in need. Be sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you could rate five stars and leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. You can follow me on Instagram at biscuit breakdown, Twitter, biscuit breakdown without the O, or Gmail, biscuitbreakdown pod at gmail.com. I would love to hear from you guys and include it into topics for the next couple of shows. Obviously, we're moving into the off season now and things are gonna slow down a bit. My plan is to put out shows, I think, every other week, because there's not going to be as much to talk about. Um but if I could hear from you guys, get some listener questions, topics, ideas, um, I think that could be uh more fun. So feel free to message on all those apps and stay in touch over the off season. But that wraps up today's show. Congratulations to the Carolina Hurricanes, their whole organization, family, friends, uh just everybody around the world who cheers on for the hurricanes. Enjoy this moment because it's been twenty years since their last title, and who knows when they'll get on top of the mountain again. Could be next year. They got a lot of guys returning. Could be in twenty years, you never know. It's a hard league. So soak it in, Carolina. This has been Biscuit Breakdown. Consider yourself served.