The Conference Finals of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs are on, and in this Vancouver Canucks-centric corner of the internet, it’s been hard not to watch them through the lens of “What could this all mean for the Canucks?”

More specifically, it’s been hard not to watch the Conference Finals and notice how much further ahead these four teams are when compared with the recent, just-started-rebuilding state of the Canucks. And from there, it’s hard not to wonder how the Canucks might possibly get to where the Conference Finalists are now, and whether there’s anything they can learn from this current crop of contenders.

We’ve already taken a couple of looks at how the rosters of these teams have been built up. But there is also something to be said about how their books have been built. We’re talking cap management, and it should come as no surprise that the four Conference Finalists are all among the most cap-efficient organizations in the entire NHL.

How did they accomplish that? In large part due to a practice of signing their young stars to long-term deals early. That’s definitely a lesson the Canucks can take away for themselves over the next few seasons.

We know we’ve been talking about the Montreal Canadiens an awful lot lately. But they’re just so fun, and they’re a team that’s easy to want to emulate, because they’re not just contending now, they’re set up to contend for years.

They, along with their Eastern Conference Finals opponents in the Carolina Hurricanes, are kind of the poster children for this concept. The Canadiens began this trend for themselves with the signing of then-future-captain Nick Suzuki to an eight-year, $7.875 million extension in October of 2021, when Suzuki was just 22. He’d just come off a sophomore season of 41 points in 56 games, but the Habs had seen enough to commit. The next year, before his extension even kicked in, Suzuki posted 61 points. Then 66, then 77, then 89, and then this most recent season, where he hit 101 points and a Selke nomination. His contract is now one of the best values in the entire league.

More would follow.

Cole Caufield was signed to an eight-year, $7.85 million contract of his own in June of 2023. He was coming off a third NHL season of just 36 points in 46 games, but that didn’t worry the Canadiens. He’s since blossomed into a 50-goal scorer.

Kaiden Guhle also extended at the age of 22, in July of 2024, for six years at $5.5 million. Now he’s a top-four defender making far less than he should.

Juraj Slafkovsky, who hit the NHL at age 18, also extended in July of 2024, and at an even younger age, having just completed a so-so sophomore season of 50 points in 81 games. He signed for eight years at $7.6 million, and has since continued to develop into a veritable young star.

Lane Hutson was the latest to join the signed-early group. He extended for eight years at $8.85 million this past October, at the age of 21, and following a record-breaking rookie season. That extension hasn’t even kicked in yet, but the comparative salaries of other top NHL defenders is enough to say that Hutson’s deal will be a bargain eventually.

That’s five young players of incredible importance, all in or about to hit their playing primes, and all signed for significantly less than market value into the foreseeable future. All the Habs had to do to get there was to bet on their young stars before they fully broke out into stardom. Montreal knew who their guys were, and they committed to them.

The same can be said of the Carolina Hurricanes, though they’re a little older in their cycle. They signed Andrei Svechnikov to his own eight-year, $7.75 million deal back in August 2021 when he was just 21 years old. They’ve mostly benefited from that contract since, through Svechnikov’s various ups and downs, and especially this current season, where Svechnikov notched a career-high 70 points in 79 games.

The Hurricanes haven’t been as diligent with this practice as have been the Canadiens, and their not doing this with Sebastian Aho led to some offer sheet-related headaches. But they seem to have really learned their lesson since then, which is why they extended Seth Jarvis in August 2024 at age 22 to an eight-year, $7.42 million deal. He’s since developed into the kind of top-line forward that Team Canada calls for tournaments.

More recently, the Hurricanes signed Jackson Blake to an eight-year, $5.12 million extension at the age of 22 after a rookie season of 34 points in 80 games. That raised some eyebrows at the time, but Blake just upped his numbers to 53 points in 81 games, and his extension hasn’t even kicked in yet. They did the exact same with Logan Stankoven, signing him to an eight-year, $6 million extension and after his sophomore campaign. It hasn’t kicked in yet, but Stankoven has already posted a 44-point season this year, and added eight more in the playoffs thus far.

Because the Hurricanes’ ages are spread out a little more than are the Canadiens, the effect is less clear, but the implications are the same. Carolina have set themselves up for not just contention, but for long-term contention. And no matter how well the rest of their run goes this year, they won’t have to worry about getting priced out by their own players thereafter, because many of the most important ones are already signed to long-term, under-market-value deals.

This is all less pronounced in the Colorado Avalanche, who are even further along in their contention cycle and – having been swept this week – may in fact be approaching the end. Their only remaining example of the ‘sign them young’ phenomenon is Cale Makar, who is still working through the six-year, $9 million AAV extension he signed back in July of 2021, right after his sophomore season. He’s only one player, but the impact of having had the best defender in the world under contract for less than $10 million for this long, and for one more year hereafter, cannot be overstated.

And it’s worth noting that the Avalanche definitely benefitted from this in the past, having previously had Nathan MacKinnon signed to a seven-year, $6.3 million contract from the age of 21, a deal they signed before MacKinnon had broken out productively.

You won’t really find any examples of this from the Vegas Golden Knights, but then they’re a team that has largely bypassed the whole internal draft-and-development side of team-building, and nothing they do is ever typical.

The lessons that could be learned by the Canucks are obvious enough. They’ve got some young, potentially foundational pieces already in place for their rebuild, and they’ll draft at least one more this year. Zeev Buium becomes eligible for an extension this summer (while eight-year contracts are still on the table.) Tom Willander will next summer (when six years will be the new maximum.) Even whoever they draft this year at third overall, assuming they begin their entry-level contract next season, will become eligible for an extension as of July 2028.

Deciding which of these players are going to make up the next core of the Vancouver Canucks, and getting them under lengthy contracts as early as possible before they’ve reached their fullest potential, is one way the Canucks can emulate both the short-term, but especially the long-term, success of the current crop of NHL Conference Finalists.