Come every June, when the Stanley Cup final matchup is set, teams around the league will look at the road the two finalists took to get hockey’s greatest challenge. And we don’t mean road in terms of who they beat to get to the final, but from the start, how did they build the team that ultimately landed them competing for the Stanley Cup?

And when you’re in the Vancouver Canucks‘ situation, starting their rebuild from scratch, they need to be a sponge and soak up all of the strategies to help them get to the pinnacle of hockey. Both of these teams built their roster very differently from a traditional rebuilding standpoint. Typically, teams will stockpile draft capital and develop their own homegrown talent before acquiring the necessary complementary pieces around their core. That’s not how Vegas or Carolina have done things.

Of their current roster, the Hurricanes have drafted and developed six players (Sebastian Aho, Jackson Blake, Seth Jarvis, Alexander Nikishin, Jaccob Slavin, and Andrei Svechnikov), acquired six players through trades (Taylor Hall, Mark Jankowski, Jordan Martinook, K’Andre Miller, Jordan Staal, and Logan Stankoven), seven signing as unrestricted free agents (Frederik Andersen, William Carrier, Jalen Chatfield, Nikolaj Ehlers, Shayne Gostisbehere, Eric Robinson, and Sean Walker), and picked up one on waivers (Brandon Bussi).

Meanwhile, the Golden Knights have just one drafted and developed player (Pavel Dorofeyev), traded for 13 of their roster players (Rasmus Andersson, Ivan Barbashev, Nic Dowd, Jack Eichel, Noah Hanifin, Tomas Hertl, Adin Hill, Jeremy Lauzon, Mitch Marner, Colton Sissons, Cole Smith, Mark Stone, and Shea Theodore), signed four players via free agency (Dylan Coghlan, Carter Hart, Brett Howden, and Keegan Kolesar), and have two expansion players remaining (William Karlsson, and Brayden McNabb).

In total, that’s just seven of the 40 nightly roster players in the Stanley Cup final who were drafted and developed by their current team. Yet, nearly half of the players (19) were acquired via a trade, putting a slight damper on the rebuild-through-the-draft theory. Still, teams must draft and develop players before they can move them for the right piece to help them over the edge.

But there are some other lessons we think the Canucks should adopt from these two teams.

The Vegas Golden Knights are known as one of the most cutthroat organizations in the NHL. They are aggressive on the trade market and are totally unafraid to move on from players who no longer fit their vision.

Exhibit A was how they handled the 2023 Conn Smythe winner and franchise-leading goal scorer at the time, Jonathan Marchessault, as an unrestricted free agent in 2024. Marchessault went on the Cam and Strick Podcast in September that season and shed some light on the contract situation with Vegas:

The Carolina Hurricanes are near polar opposites of the Vegas Golden Knights in terms of how they are viewed around the league. They are a well-managed, structured, and forward-thinking organization, which has led to their eight-year run of playoff runs, advancing to the second round in all but one of those years, and three trips to the Eastern Conference final.

We would attribute much of their success to their impressive drafting, but the biggest factor has to be their forward-thinking mentality. When the Hurricanes see something in a player, they don’t wait to acquire or extend them. They play a successful system under Rod Brind’Amour, and headhunt players that fit their playing style, and often acquire them on the cheap.

Speaking of cheap, just look at their books. The Hurricanes are so good at getting ahead of contracts, which now look like stellar contracts. Last offseason, the Hurricanes extended Logan Stankoven and Jackson Blake to massive eight-year deals, Stankoven earning $6 million and Blake $5.11 million annually.

At the time they signed their contracts, Stankoven’s size raised questions about his ability to play down the middle of the ice, and Blake had just 34 career points and one full NHL season under his belt. Yet, the Hurricanes knew they had something in these players and locked them up to lengthy extensions.

Fast forward to present day, and Stankoven and Blake have been two-thirds of the Hurricanes’ best line in these playoffs. Blake shares the team lead with linemate Taylor Hall in playoff points (18), and while Stankoven leads the team in goals (11), three behind Howden for the league lead. If those players waited until this offseason to extend, their cap hit would be much, much higher given what they’ve produced this postseason.

This strategy doesn’t always work. The Hurricanes did the same with Jesperi Kotkaniemi, signing him to an eight-year, $4.82 million extension in 2022. Since signing the deal, Kotkaniemi has had seasons of 27 points in 79 games, 33 points in 78 games, and just nine points in 42 games this season. He has been a healthy scratch for all 18 playoff games this season, and is likely trending toward either moving on or a trip to the American League.

But when it does work out, it gives teams that extra bit of cap room to spend in free agency on impact players, as the Hurricanes did this past summer by signing Nikolaj Ehlers to a six-year, $8.5 million contract.

This strategy involves risk and trust in your talent evaluators and development staff, but it pays off in a big way when it hits. The Canucks have the opportunity to get out ahead of contracts this summer.

Liam Öhgren, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Aatu Räty, Zeev Buium, and Elias Pettersson (D) all become extension eligible on July 1. Likely only Buium and maybe Öhgren have shown enough at the NHL level to warrant placing a big bet on with lengthy extensions; however, it seemed to work out well for the Hurricanes when they extended Blake after just 81 NHL games.

Do the Canucks believe in their long-term outlook enough to get ahead of their extensions this summer? It’s an important offseason as this is the final year teams can offer eight-year deals. If the Canucks see some of those extension-eligible players as core pieces moving forward, then it’s probably best to bet on them now before they break out and their yearly salary skyrockets.

There is no perfect model for building a Stanley Cup champion. Many former Cup winners have different strategies and stories about how they climbed to the top of the NHL mountain. But as the Canucks load up for what is projected to be a long-term building process, they should look at the Golden Knights’ cutthroat approach and use the Hurricanes’ forward-thinking as starting points to help shape the next successful era of hockey in Vancouver.