The Carolina Hurricanes finally own a Stanley Cup. The Hurricanes capped their eighth season in North Carolina since moving from Hartford by beating the Edmonton Oilers 3-1 in Game 7 to take home the Cup.
Here are some key numbers from Game 7 as the Hurricanes celebrate the first Cup since entering the NHL in 1979:
2 -- Power-play goals allowed at home by the Hurricanes in their four home games in the Final. Carolina held the Oilers to a 2-for-24 performance with the man advantage and scored a shorthanded goal, while going 8-for-27 (with one SHG allowed) on the power play in their four home games.
3 -- Stanley Cups won by Carolina defenseman Aaron Ward, who was a two-time winner with Detroit and scored the first goal of Game 7.
4 -- Before 2006, teams that had lost Game 7 of the Final after extending the series to the limit by winning Games 5 and 6. The Oilers joined the 1994 Vancouver Canucks, 1987 Philadelphia Flyers, 1954 Montreal Canadiens and 1945 Detroit Red Wings in coming up a game short after rallying to force Game 7.
5 -- Goals scored in the Final by Edmonton's Fernando Pisani, including the Oilers' lone tally in Game 7, the most by any player on either team in the series.
6 -- Number of players who have won Stanley Cups in consecutive seasons with different teams. Carolina's Cory Stillman, a member of Tampa Bay's 2004 championship squad, became the sixth. The last one was Claude Lemieux (1995 with New Jersey; 1996 with Colorado). Stillman and Lemieux are the only players to accomplish this feat since 1962, when both Al Arbour and Ed Litzenberger won the Cup with Toronto after winning it with Chicago the previous year.
7 -- Victories in Game 7s by Carolina defenseman Glen Wesley, in eight career opportunities.
8 -- Stanley Cups won by the four franchises of the World Hockey Association that joined the NHL in 1979. The Oilers have won five, the Hurricanes one and the Colorado Avalanche (formerly the Quebec Nordiques) have won twice.
9 -- Playoff games this season in which the Hurricanes led by two goals or more. Carolina went 9-0 in those games, including Game 7.
10 -- Playoff years since the Stanley Cup-winning goal was scored by a defenseman. Carolina's Frantisek Kaberle's power-play goal in the second period proved to be the Cup winner. The last time a defenseman had scored the goal that won the Cup was 1996, when Colorado's Uwe Krupp scored in the fourth overtime to beat Florida 1-0 to complete a four-game sweep.
11 -- Uniform number of Carolina's Justin Williams, who scored the empty-net goal that clinched the Cup for the Hurricanes. Williams became the first player in playoff history to score an empty-netter in Game 7 of the Final.
12 -- Victories by the home team in the 14 times the Stanley Cup Final have gone to a seventh game. Including Carolina's win this year, home teams have won the last six.
15 -- Playoff victories by Carolina goaltender Cam Ward this year -- one more than he had during the regular season.
16 -- Goals allowed by Ward in the seven games against Edmonton. That was good enough to earn Ward the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP ?- the first rookie goaltender since Philadelphia's Ron Hextall in 1987 to win the Conn Smythe. Hextall also won it against Edmonton, but didn't win the series -- the Oilers beat the Flyers in seven games. The final score in Game 7 was 3-1 -- the same as this year.
22 -- Games this season, including the playoffs, in which Carolina led by two goals or more at any point. The Hurricanes won all 22, including Game 7.
29 -- Of the game's 56 faceoffs taken by Carolina's Rod Brind'Amour, who won 16 and lost 13.
36 -- Improvement in points by the Hurricanes in 2005-06 from 2003-04, the biggest regular-season jump in the NHL.
48 -- Hits credited to the Hurricanes in Game 7, more than four times the number they had in Game 6 (11) and more than double the number by the Oilers in Game 7 (23). Carolina's Erik Cole had nine hits in only 12:27 of ice time in Game 7, and 16 of the 18 skaters who dressed for the Hurricanes had at least one hit.
1,480 -- Combined regular-season and playoff games played by Wesley, who became a Stanley Cup winner for the first time. That's still well behind Tampa Bay's Dave Andreychuk, who won his first Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004 in his 162nd playoff game after 1,597 regular-season games.
1972 -- Year of the only previous championship of any kind in the history of the Hurricanes' franchise. The then-New England Whalers, based in Boston, captured the first World Hockey Association title, beating the Winnipeg Jets (now the Phoenix Coyotes) in six games. The Whalers moved to Hartford while still in the WHA and then to Carolina in 1997.
