page_title: Carolina Hurricanes
section_title: Stanley Cup Finals and slow starts (2001–2006)
hierarchical_section_title: Carolina Hurricanes / Franchise history / Stanley Cup Finals and slow starts (2001–2006)
caption_attribution_description: Eric Staal, Canadian ice hockey player
context_page_description: The Carolina Hurricanes, or Canes, are a professional ice hockey team based in Raleigh, North Carolina. They compete in the National Hockey League as a member of the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference. The Hurricanes play their home games at the 18,680-seat PNC Arena.
  The franchise was formed in 1971 as the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association. The Whalers saw success immediately, winning the Eastern Division in the WHA's first three seasons, as well as becoming the inaugural Avco World Trophy Champions to cap off the 1972–73 season. The Whalers again competed for the World Trophy in 1978, this time falling short to the Winnipeg Jets in a rematch of the 1973 Finals. The franchise joined the NHL in 1979 as part of the NHL–WHA merger, renaming themselves the Hartford Whalers. The team relocated to North Carolina in 1997, rebranding themselves as the Hurricanes. Carolina advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in 2002, where they were defeated by the Detroit Red Wings. The Hurricanes won the 2006 Stanley Cup over the Edmonton Oilers, giving the state of North Carolina its first major professional sports championship.
context_section_description: The Hurricanes made national waves for the first time in the 2002 playoffs. They survived a late charge from the Washington Capitals to win the division, but expectations were low entering the first round against the defending Eastern Conference champion New Jersey Devils. However, Artūrs Irbe and Kevin Weekes were solid in goal and the Hurricanes won two games in overtime as they defeated the Devils in six games. Their second-round matchup was against the Montreal Canadiens, who were riding a wave of emotion after their captain Saku Koivu's return from cancer treatment. In the third period of Game 4 in Montreal, down 2–1 in the series and 3–0 in the game, Carolina would tie the game and later win on Niclas Wallin's overtime goal. The game became known to Hurricanes fans as the "Miracle at Molson"; Carolina won the next two games by a combined 13–3 margin over a dejected Habs club to take the series.
  In the Eastern Conference Finals, Carolina met the heavily favored Toronto Maple Leafs. In Game 6 in Toronto, the Leafs' Mats Sundin tied the game with 22 seconds remaining to send it to overtime, where Carolina's Martin Gelinas would score to send the franchise to their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance. During this series, several Hurricanes fan traditions drew hockey-wide media attention for the first time: fans met the team at the airport on the return from every road trip and echoed football-season habits honed for games across the parking lot by hosting massive tailgate parties before each home game, a relative novelty in the cold-weather-centric NHL. Inside the building, the CBC's Don Cherry lauded the RBC Center as "the loudest building in the NHL", praise that would be echoed in 2006.
  In the Stanley Cup Finals, Carolina would face the Detroit Red Wings, thought to be the prohibitive favorite all year. Though the Hurricanes stunned the Wings in Game 1 when Ron Francis scored in the first minute of overtime, Detroit stormed back to win the next four games. Game 3 in Raleigh featured a triple-overtime thriller eventually won by Detroit's Igor Larionov, the oldest player to score a last-round goal.
  The Hurricanes looked poised to pick up where they left off in the 2002–03, but never recovered from a 10-loss January and finished dead last in the league with 61 points. After a similarly slow start to the 2003–04 season, Paul Maurice, who had been the team's coach since midway through their next-to-last season in Hartford, was fired and replaced with former New York Islanders bench boss Peter Laviolette. Under Laviolette, Weekes remained tough, but the offense was suspect; center Josef Vasicek led the team with a mere 19 goals and 26 assists for 45 points. Many of the new fans attracted to the team (and to hockey itself) during the 2002 playoff run lost interest and attendance declined. One of the few positive results of these losing years was the team's drafting of Eric Staal in 2003.
caption: Eric Staal was drafted by the Hurricanes in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. He was named team captain in 2010. He was later traded to the New York Rangers.
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