Sun Belt Showdown: NHL heads south for entire final four

At first glance, you might think this is an NCAA basketball Final Four rather than the NHL conference finals.

But it's not a misprint — for the first time in history, the final four teams in the NHL playoffs are all located south of Pennsylvania, per OptaStats.

The Dallas Stars ensured an all-south Final Four with a 2-1 win over the Seattle Kraken in Game 7 of their second-round series on Monday.

The Stars will face the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Final, while the Carolina Hurricanes will battle the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final.

The closest the NHL has ever been previously to an all-Sun Belt final four was 2020 when the Tampa Bay Lightning, Stars and Golden Knights were joined by the New York Islanders in the conference finals. But that year, all post-season games were played in Toronto and Edmonton in front of no fans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Las Vegas, believe it or not, is the northernmost outpost for the conference finals. It is just a bit north of Raleigh, N.C., home of the Hurricanes.

The Stars and Panthers have been in their current homes the longest. Dallas moved from Minnesota and the Panthers, based out of Sunrise, Fla., started play as an expansion franchise in 1993.

The Hurricanes left Hartford in 1997, while the Golden Knights played their first game as an expansion team in 2017.

Indeed, all four states where the NHL's four survivors are located hosted NCAA men's basketball championship tournament games this year.

But two teams from Florida — Miami and Florida Atlantic — and one from California (San Diego State) fell short as Connecticut (which lost its NHL team to Carolina) emerged victorious.

Watch all the Eastern and Western Conference Final games on Sportsnet or SN NOW.