Who will matchup with who in the Stanley Cup Final?

We’re just a few hours away from the Stanley Cup Final, and the coaching staffs for both the Carolina Hurricanes and Vegas Golden Knights are preparing for how to match up against one another.

Both teams have been defensive workhorses through the first three rounds of the playoffs, and fans of disciplined hockey will be in for a treat as Rod Brind’Amour and John Tortorella navigate how to get the upper hand.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss the potential matchups between the two teams in Games 1 and 2, and how Carolina could deploy the lines with home-ice advantage.

Carter Hutton: The biggest storyline heading into this is the matchups. You look at what Vegas brings to the table, and if they don’t have last change in Carolina, my concern is where does Jack Eichel match up now? If you’re the Hurricanes, I think you’re going to have Jordan Staal’s line going against line one. I see Staal, Nikolaj Ehlers and Jordan Martinook going against Eichel, Ivan Barbashev and Pavel Dorofeyev.

Now this is when it gets interesting for me. If you’re going to go with Sebastian Aho’s line of him, Andrei Svechnikov and Seth Jarvis against Mitch Marner’s line with William Karlsson and Brett Howden, because Marner and Eichel are spread out, now that’s going to give a big pass to your third and fourth line against Logan Stankoven, Jackson Blake and Taylor Hall, who have become big-time difference makers.

These are the things that I think will be very interesting, and it’s a game of chess, where coaching really comes into play. This will establish who will get who, along with the defensive matchups, because Jaccob Slavin can’t be on the ice every single time.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…