RALEIGH, N.C. — A few hours before puck drop, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman held his state of the union presser, and as he always does, he rolled out all kinds of accolades and numbers and facts about the season.

The message in his annual address has a similar theme every time: He feels the game is better than ever.

Except that was not true for many years, even when the commissioner tried to tell us otherwise. Certainly not in the dead puck era of the early 2000s, when goals were hard to come by, and certainly not in the many years when head shots dominated headlines.

But the NHL has indeed come a long way as far as the way the game is played today. There is more skill and speed in the modern game than we’ve ever seen.

Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday night might have been one of the most exciting championship series openers ever.

Really.

We had 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, before Colton Sissons made the backhand pass of his career to set up Tomáš Hertl’s winner with 3:24 left in the third period.

There were probably a lot of people who needed a cigarette after that adrenaline rush of a game.

High octane, high-end, two playoff juggernaut teams coming into a full-on collision on the biggest stage of the season and delivering an absolute gem.

“For sure, it’s easier to talk about being on the winning side,’’ Vegas goal machine Brett Howden said with a grin after the 5-4 win. “A lot of momentum swings back and forth, both ways. It must have been a really fun game for fans to watch, for everyone to watch.

“I think both teams will go back and watch (video), there’s a lot of things we can clean up still. But super happy we were on top of this one.’’

Oh, sure, both coaching staffs will focus on the defensive breakdowns and hope to deliver us 2-1 games the rest of the way.

But I’m not sure the talent on both of these rosters will allow it. There’s a tantalizing tug-of-war at play in this final series between two opposing systems with deep lineups that strive to expose the other team’s mistakes.

One could see the difficulty that people across the league had in picking a winner when I polled 49 coaches and team executives before the series. The final tally was 27-22 for Vegas, but those polled really felt it was hard to predict.

“Two incredibly talented, well-constructed, deep rosters that play with a high degree of pace,’’ said one team executive for that poll. “Two incredible coaches who are among the best at motivating their teams. Two goaltenders who have both faced adversity yet are on incredible runs. This one is a ‘pick ’em’ for me.”

That sure is how Game 1 felt. Neither team ever felt totally in control. Wild momentum swings.

“For sure, I thought it was a great game, for both sides, that’s a loud building to play in front of,” said Golden Knights blueliner Shea Theodore, who tallied a goal and two assists on this night. “It was great for our group to battle back.”

Hurricanes star Seth Jarvis was asked if he was surprised by all the offense Tuesday night.

“No. Both teams have talent,” he said. “Both teams have the ability to finish. So, no.”

Was it a game that was fun to play in?

“It was fun, yeah,’’ said Sissons. “It was a lot of fun.”

Would his head coach, John Tortorella, agree?

“I don’t know. I think he enjoyed it, obviously the result,’’ said Sissons with a smile.

It was a game of adjustments. Vegas knew Carolina would come out fast and hard. The famous Canes forecheck was all over the pre-scout for the Golden Knights. And still, it was 2-0 Hurricanes early after a pair of elegant Nikolaj Ehlers goals.

“We haven’t seen that (kind of) aggressive play so far in the playoffs,” Theodore said. “I thought we weathered the storm and obviously upped our game in the second.”

The thing about pre-scouts and video sessions and whatever comes out of the mouth of coaches is that, in the end, that only goes so far. Players really need to see it to believe it.

Now, both teams have a true sense of each other after Game 1.

Shayne Gostisbehere took the blame postgame for leaving his check on Hertl just long enough for the Vegas forward to bury the winner. It was one of many breakdowns on this night from a Carolina team that doesn’t normally make those kinds of errors.

“Those are the mistakes we made tonight that, really, we just don’t make,” Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “And we made too many of those tonight.”

Maybe. But the danger in that kind of self-analysis is forgetting why those mistakes are happening. Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper is fond of saying, “The enemy has a vote.”

The Canes made critical mistakes because Vegas pressured them into the kind of decisions that Ottawa, Philadelphia and Montreal never came close to doing.

The shoe was on the other foot early in this game. Carolina came flying out of the gates, and Vegas needed to come up for air.

Credit goes to Tortorella. He talked to his players during a TV timeout with the team down 2-0. It had an impact on the group.

“He just tried to calm us down a little bit,” said Theodore. “It’s loud, it’s rowdy. They were kind of all over us to start. I like his approach of just getting everyone in, getting everyone on the same page, and just get back to work.”

The Golden Knights are now 20-4-1 since a late-season coaching change. The Torts magic carpet ride continues.

So does the Howden spring show. He had 12 goals in 58 regular-season games. He’s now up to 11 goals in 17 playoff games after giving Vegas a 4-3 lead 1:21 into the third period.

In a series full of star players, the 28-year-old is fashioning quite a tale for himself.

“It’s the best time of year,” Howden said. “Everything is on the line, every shift. Especially now in the finals. Every play matters so much. I don’t know what it is, I’ve always really enjoyed it. I enjoy the hardness of it. I feel like I’m a North-South player that likes to go hard to the net. In playoffs, when it’s tough to score, I feel like those times are the key times to be going to the net because pucks are bouncing around there. Just a lot of fun playing this hockey.”

On this night, it was a lot of fun for everyone watching this hockey game.

Six more games of this, please?