One Former Nashville Predator Wins 2026 NHL Stanley Cup
Although the Nashville Predators fell short of their goals and did not get to win the Stanley Cup this past season, one former Nashville player did win the trophy Sunday.
Former Predators and current Carolina Hurricanes left winger Mark Jankowski helped the Hurricanes win this year’s Stanley Cup FInals in six games over the Vegas Golden Knights. Jankowski and the Hurricanes took down Vegas 3-0 on the road to capture the Stanley Cup Trophy.
It is the first time since 2006 that Carolina has won the league championship and the first time in Jankowski’s career that he got to lift the Stanley Cup.
“It means everything. I don’t even know how I feel. It’s just everything. Since the buzzer went, it’s just pure joy. It’s all the hard work that we put in to get to this point. It’s all worth it,” Jankowski told NHL Network.
Jankowski played three seasons from the 2022-2023 season through the 2024-2025 season. In those seasons, he played in 50, 32 and 41 games, respectively and scored a combined 18 goals between those three seasons.
Jankowski was traded from Nashville to Carolina before the trade deadline in March 2025 for a fifth-round draft pick in this year’s draft.
Jankowski played in 68 games during the regular season for the Hurricanes before he recorded five points during Carolina’s run to the Stanley Cup. Jankowski’s lone goal of the playoffs came in the second game of the Stanley Cup Finals, where he helped Carolina tie the game at 2-2 in the third period before the Hurricanes ultimately ended up winning 4-3 in overtime, tying the series at one game apiece at the time.
It was perhaps one of the more overlooked, but critical goals of the series for the Hurricanes. If Jankowski did not score that goal, Vegas could have easily taken a 2-0 lead in the series that night.
“It starts from the top. It starts from Rod. He epitomizes the work ethic when played and we try to model our game after him and how he wants us to play. And when we are playing our game and we stick to it and we play how he wants us to play, we can obviously beat anyone,” Jankowski said on the confidence Carolina played with, crediting his head coach Rod Brind’Amour.
Nashville is looking to one day reach the height that its former player reached Sunday night. The Predators have made the Stanley Cup Finals one time in their history, but lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games during the finals in the 2016-2017 season.
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Graham Baakko is a lead writer for both Nashville Predators On SI and Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham graduated from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as an intern for GamecockCentral.