Friday Four: How Hurricanes and Golden Knights built their teams differently

It’s the time of year where envy is running rampant in the NHL. There are 30 teams wishing they were in the position that Carolina and Vegas are right now and everyone is trying to figure out how to get there. 

Getting to a Stanley Cup Final isn’t easy and even though it’s a copycat league, the truth is there’s no exact blueprint on how to do it. Teams are built many different ways and finding the perfect mix of talent is key. We’ve seen a team like the Florida Panthers recently win a pair of Cups thanks to some shrewd transactions, like acquiring Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett. If we look further back at a team like the Detroit Red Wings, they were able to have more than a decade of success due to building through the draft. Players like Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom eventually transitioned to Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, to give the Wings a homegrown core. 

The reality of today’s NHL is you have to be flexible when building your roster. You can’t rely on one strategy entirely and you have to explore many avenues to bolster your squad. That includes how you manage your cap and who you have behind the bench as well. Organizations that have the best blend and balance of everything often have the greatest chance to still be playing hockey in June and Carolina and Vegas have traveled two different, yet successful, paths. 

Drafting and developing

Everyone should know by now that Vegas cares little about keeping their draft picks, so it’s no surprise they only have a pair of them on this Cup Final roster. In fact, Vegas only has one first-round pick in its history that’s still with the organization and that’s Trevor Connelly, who played in the AHL this season. 

That said, one of those picks is Pavel Dorofeyev, who is having a major impact in these playoffs with 10 goals. Dorofeyev was a great find by the Golden Knights in the third round of the 2019 draft and he’s now tallied 72 goals over the past two seasons. Kaeden Korczak, who went a round earlier than Dorofeyev in that same draft, has turned into a decent depth defenceman for the Golden Knights, appearing in 12 games this post-season. Vegas may not have a big quantity of draft picks on their current roster, but there is still some quality there. 

Let’s also keep in mind Vegas had an expansion draft to work with as well and a couple of those pieces are still making an impact today. William Karlsson and Brayden McNabb were claimed in 2017 and remain important contributors in 2026. McNabb has seen his role increase with Alex Pietrangelo sidelined and Karlsson is their second-line centre. 

Carolina, on the other hand, has built a significant part of its core through the draft by hitting on high picks and with some great finds outside of the first round. Andrei Svechnikov was a second-overall selection and the Canes capitalized on a cap jam for the Toronto Maple Leafs by receiving a first-round pick in exchange for taking on Patrick Marleau’s contract. They turned that selection into Seth Jarvis who earned a spot on the Canadian Olympic team earlier this year. 

The Hurricanes have also found gems later in drafts. Sebastian Aho was a second-rounder and both Jaccob Slavin and Jackson Blake were mined in the fourth round. Slavin may have been Carolina’s best find, as he’s arguably turned into the best defensive defenceman in the NHL. The Canes have also done a good job of setting themselves up for the future with Pyotr Kochetkov and Alexander Nikishin, who they found in the second and third rounds respectively. Both players could end up being key pieces of Carolina’s future.

Signings and trades

Vegas may not keep many of its key draft picks, but that doesn’t mean the Golden Knights haven’t gotten value out of them. They’ve acquired a number of important pieces using their first-round picks in trades, like Jack Eichel, Rasmus Andersson and Tomas Hertl, while maximizing returns for late first rounders. 

For instance, Hertl was acquired for David Edstrom, a player Vegas picked 32^nd the summer after they won the Cup, along with the 25^th overall pick in 2025. The key piece in the Noah Hanifin trade will be Vegas’ first-round pick in the 2026 draft, which will be either 30^th or 31^st, depending on how the Cup Final plays out. The Golden Knights also picked up Ivan Barbashev for Zachary Dean, who they picked 30^th in 2021. At the end of the day, the perceived value of a late first-round pick is likely much higher than the player you end up picking and Vegas knows it. They’ve conceded those lottery tickets for players that help them right now. 

Carolina has also been very aggressive on the trade front, even if it hasn’t always worked out as planned. The Canes brought in Jake Guentzel and Mikko Rantanen but ultimately didn’t get either to put pen to paper on a long-term extension, so they weren’t afraid to pivot. They ended up flipping Guentzel’s rights to Tampa to recoup a third-round pick but the Rantanen move ended up being critical. Carolina received Logan Stankoven back and he’s been a major contributor with 10 goals during this playoff run, plus a pair of first-round picks. One of those picks was packaged up as part of the trade that brought in K’Andre Miller, who’s been sensational this post-season. The Rantanen deal was a great example of being aggressive but also not being afraid to move on quickly for the long-term health of the franchise. 

When it comes to signings in free agency, Vegas’ roster surprisingly isn’t full of players it paid big money to in a bidding war with other teams. Alex Pietrangelo was a huge acquisition but injuries have forced him to LTIR, so he isn’t a part of this run. That said, arguably the team’s two most important players were recent signings. Mitch Marner technically was brought in via trade, but it was essentially a free-agent signing because there was little doubt he was going to Vegas. The trade aspect was just so Marner could get an eighth year on his contract. Then they added Carter Hart in October, who stabilized their goaltending and has posted great numbers in the playoffs. 

Carolina has actually been the more active team in free agency, landing players like Frederik Andersen, Sean Walker and Shayne Gostisbehere, but Nik Ehlers was the real difference maker. He’s another skilled offensive talent that has balanced out their lineup, as they’ve utilized Ehlers on their third line in the post-season and given them depth that no one was able to match in the first three rounds. 

Salary cap

If you want to compete in today’s NHL you have to be able to keep your cap situation in order and weaponize your space. Vegas has always employed an aggressive approach, spending as much as they can and even utilizing LTIR space (before the NHL changed rules) to gain an advantage. Someone like Mark Stone was a frequent inhabitant of LTIR and was activated for Game 1 of the playoffs on multiple occasions, allowing Vegas to add talent they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. 

It's mostly worked to their benefit, but their tight cap situation has hurt the Golden Knights at times. Players like Max Pacioretty and Marc-Andre Fleury had to be offloaded for next to nothing because of a cap crunch, which maybe isn’t the best asset management. That’s a small price to pay for Vegas, though. The Golden Knights are constantly competing for championships and even if they take a small step back, it’s usually quickly followed by multiple big steps forward. 

Carolina tends to remain a little more flexible. The Canes were more than $8 million under the cap this season and it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Free agency is becoming thinner and thinner every year and the Hurricanes won’t spend money just for the sake of it. They had enough room to be the highest bidder for Ehlers but chose to keep some cap space free when it came to other free agents last summer since they already had a deep lineup. Saving cap space makes them nimbler and it’s easier to add rentals like Guentzel and Rantanen in-season when the opportunity arises. 

Coaching

In nine seasons, Vegas has reached three Cup Finals, made another two Conference Finals and won a championship, but John Tortorella is already the team’s fourth head coach. There’s an incredibly high standard with the Golden Knights and Bruce Cassidy found that out the hard way when he was let go just weeks before the playoffs, after he won a Cup with the franchise only a few years prior. As bold as it may be, you can’t argue with it. Tortorella has pushed all the right buttons and is 20-4-2 dating back to the regular season since taking over. 

Carolina is the polar opposite. Rod Brind’Amour started as an assistant in 2011 and moved to the head coaching role for the 2018-19 season. You could argue there are better coaches than Brind’Amour but he may be the most important to his team. The Canes all seem to move in unison and sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart. Brind’Amour has them operating like a well-oiled machine and that’s never been more apparent than in these playoffs, where the Hurricanes lost just one game in the first three rounds. 

That doesn’t mean Brind’Amour has never been questioned, though. Carolina struggled to get over the Conference Final hump on his watch prior to this spring, losing three times in his tenure in decisive fashion. Had that been Vegas, there’s no way Brind’Amour would’ve survived all those disappointments. 

You can quibble about some of the decisions each franchise has made over the years, though both Carolina and Vegas have been two of the most consistent teams the NHL has offered over the last decade. They’ve just done so in vastly different ways.