The NHL season is over and, to the dismay of most purists, the Carolina Hurricanes have won their first Stanley Cup. Yet I’m pleased by this result. Given that I watched three of the finals games with die-hard Edmonton fans, one might think that I was cheering against the Oil to be contrarian, but I went into the series not leaning heavily in either direction, since my team (the Detroit Red Wings) and my surrogate team (the Buffalo Sabres) were out of the running. But within the first five minutes of game one, however, I recalled and embraced my ire against Edmonton for knocking out the Wings in the first round. I’d cheered against them when they went on to play San Jose and then Anaheim, so why stop now? All I could think about in game one was how much I hated Fernando Pisani for choosing the Red Wings series to emerge out of his third-line grinder role, how Dwayne Roloson shouldn’t have been the latest in a long series of goaltenders to stand on his head to beat the Wings, and how Mike Peca gets away with more game-changing would-be infractions than almost any other player in the playoffs. So Carolina got the huge boost of my tepid support and took it all the way to the Cup.

Unlike the 2004 playoffs when I had a clear-cut preference, having followed Tampa Bay’s Martin St. Louis since his electrifying college days at Vermont and having loathed Calgary’s Ville Nieminen from his first cheap-shot antics on the Avalanche, I didn’t have any clear-cut favorite players in this series. I certainly like watching Erik Cole play (a remnant of the Hurricanes’ previous finals appearance against the Wings in 2002) and have nothing but respect for Glen Wesley and Ron Brind’Amour, but it’s hardly the same situation. Cole didn’t even dress until game six, but the stunner of his return—a return that team officials insisted would not occur—was worth the wait. The Oilers dominated that game, a home game in front of their boisterous crowd, but the Hurricanes rebounded well for game seven. Who knows what would have happened if Roloson could have played the entire series, but I’m quite impressed that Edmonton pushed the series to seven and made the wise decision not to start Ty Conklin in game two. It was an exciting, if frequently sloppy series (games two and six were blowouts), and a nice way to end a semi-triumphant return for the NHL.

Back to the braying purists, I’m primarily sick of this “Tampa Bay, now Carolina! Guh! Boo!” rhetoric of the Cup needing and deserving to be in Canada or an American city with a history of success. Gary Bettman is too committed to his (admittedly overblown) ’90s relocation and expansion project to contract every team south of the Washington Capitals, so these people might as well face the facts. There are six Canadian teams (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Calgary) and not counting Californian teams, there are seven teams from Southern, typically non-hockey locales (Phoenix, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida, Nashville, Atlanta, Dallas). If the new NHL is a level playing field, we’re bound to see those Southern teams in the finals slightly more often than Canadian teams. And thanks to the salary cap, those Canadian teams can no longer gripe about the burden of small market budgets. Would the Oilers have made it to the playoffs (let alone the finals) without the acquisitions of Pronger and Peca? Rather unlikely, given the team’s goaltending difficulties prior to the acquisition of Roloson.

As for the specifically Canadian complaints about their country deserving the Cup, I hold no sympathy pains for the Edmonton Oilers aside from Roloson’s untimely game one injury. They’ve won five Cups in the twenty-six years since moving over from the WHA. They’re the only team from the WHA to win a Stanley Cup in their original location and not to relocate during the 1990s (sorry Hartford, Winnipeg, and Quebec). During their dynasty, they had the single greatest player in NHL history (Gretzky), one of the greatest leaders in NHL history (Messier), the greatest European goal scorers in NHL history (Kurri), the second-highest scoring defenseman (Coffey), and a Hall-of-Fame goaltender (Fuhr). Let’s put that in contrast with the largely ignored prior history of the Hurricanes as the Hartford Whalers. Growing up with the Whalers as my number two team behind the Red Wings, I know all too well the deficits of both their history and roster. Ron Francis is one of the NHL’s all-time highest scorers, but remarkable consistency is hardly synonymous with electrifying energy. Gordie Howe’s father-son tour hardly compares to the finest years of Gretzky’s career. Pat Verbeek, Brendan Shanahan, and Kevin Dineen are all fine players, but the Whalers only won a single playoff series in their history. Compound this with having an owner set on moving the team (Peter Karmanos) and being a comparative small-market team within driving distance of the major New York and Boston franchises. So I should feel sorry for the team with five Cups, Gretzky, and the lone unmoved survivor of the WHA? Good luck with that one.

For all of those fans decrying how Carolina will forget about this victory once their team is awful and isn’t making the playoffs, I direct you to the Oilers’ mid-’90s attendance figures, which were in the bottom five for the league from ’93–’94 until ’96–’97, when they once again made the playoffs. Fans anywhere will be excited about their team making it to the finals and disappointed when their team has an abysmal season. The New York Knicks, Chicago Cubs, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Green Bay Packers have suffered through horrible seasons without wavering fan support, but these are aberrations. For expansion/relocated franchises, a brief taste of success, like the Florida Panthers’ surprising appearance in the ’96 finals, isn’t enough to convince fans that ownership is capable of putting a competitive product on the ice. Carolina making the finals in 2002 and winning the Cup in 2006 should establish a foundation for a long-term fan base. Look what it did for the Oilers when they won the Cup in their fifth season in the NHL. Cam Ward, Erik Cole, Eric Staal, Andrew Ladd, and the third overall pick from last year, Jack Johnson, are all young enough to form a fine core of players, obviously not the same talent level as the ’80s Oilers’ core, but substantial enough to insist that this team won’t fall apart like the hodge-podge expansion make-up of those ’96 Panthers.

The current Canes fans, fronted by Mac from Superchunk/Portastatic (in the indie rock world, at least), may embrace the “redneck hockey” tagline, but ironically, they were the team in the finals who never dressed an enforcer during the regular season or playoffs. Carolina played with speed and physicality, never resorted to the neutral zone trap (even stealing the Wings’ left-wing lock system), made the right moves near the trade deadline, and have bona fide up-and-coming stars for the NHL to bank on (sorry Fernando Pisani). My biggest knock against them, besides lucking out of series with the Canadiens (Koivu eye-gouging) and the Sabres (blueline massacre), is that they continue to have a tone-deaf cheerleader sing the anthems. I may not have cared either way when the series begin, but for an adopted team that ended up going on to win the Stanley Cup, I’d wager that one could do a lot worse than the Hurricanes. So hockey purists, please stop crying yourself to bed over the Cup residing in a warm-weather city. Again.