What lessons can NHL teams learn from the Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers?

Just as we all predicted, the Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers are going head-to-head in the Stanley Cup Final.

OK, maybe not everyone saw the Golden Knights making it quite this far. Almost nobody expected the Panthers to get here.

But on Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Faceoff Live show, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli tried to determine what lessons the league’s other 32 teams can take away from the success of this year’s finalists.

Tyler Yaremchuk: The NHL is a copy-cat league, we talk about that all the time. So I want to look at how these teams are built, and as 30 other clubs head into the off-season, let’s take a look back at what Florida and Vegas did last summer that led them to this point.

So, we’ll start with the Golden Knights. They really didn’t have that big of a summer, their big move came last season when they acquired Jack Eichel. They got Adin Hill, which, at the time, wasn’t an afterthought move, but something that was to shore up their depth. They had to offload Max Pacioretty and Evgenii Dadonov in order to create cap space, as well, but there weren’t seismic changes. You look at Florida, they made that seismic change. They swapped out Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar and a first-round pick, they brought in Matt Tkachuk. Then they went bargain bin shopping in free agency, signing Marc and Eric Staal. They got Nick Cousins as well, who’s played at important role at different parts of this playoff run, as well.

So, like I said, copy-cat league, Frank. What could other GMs learn from either of those two teams and the way they’ve been built?

Frank Seravalli: I think you have to take it a step beyond just one off-season, because what really stands out to me about the Golden Knights and the Panthers is their courage and conviction in acquiring players. You mentioned Jack Eichel, obviously we have Matthew Tkachuk on the other side. Tkachuk’s injury notwithstanding, you’ve seen two American-born players at the height of their powers, which has been impressive to watch. But it goes way beyond those two guys and what they were traded for, it’s also going back to Alex Pietrangelo and also Mark Stone, and you think about really how aggressively Vegas has built this team.

Watch the full episode here: