Three lessons to learn (and one to avoid) from each of the final four teams

With the postseason winding down and most of the league on the sidelines watching the remaining teams, it’s the time of year when fans start to wonder what lessons we can learn from the final four contenders.

After all, we’re always told that it’s a copycat league, and we know that GMs around the NHL love to pivot their gameplan to whatever the eventual champion just did. Once a team wins the Cup, everyone immediately starts picking them apart. Were they big? Small? Skilled, or fast, or neither? Did they build through the draft? Did they fire their coach? Did they play a certain style? Cool, a bunch of teams inevitably say, then we need to do that too, starting right now.

This year, there…