Draft lessons from the four Conference Finalists in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs

One of the most oft-repeated phrases in hockey is that you build championship teams through the draft. You're going to hear it whether you're discussing how Stanley Cup champion teams made it to the top or how rebuilding teams can one day get there themselves.

Makes sense, right? If you're talking about someone on an NHL roster, odds are you're talking about someone who got there by way of the NHL Entry Draft. By playing around with some of the advanced filters on Elite Prospects, I found that 808 of the 948 skaters who suited up in at least one game in the 2025-26 season started their journey to the show with a walk across that stage.

How to pick from that pool of players, though, is where things get interesting. Thirty-two teams are picking from a sample of hundreds of players in a dynamic marketplace. Means and methods will vary.

That's certainly the case with the four remaining teams in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Each built its roster in direct and indirect ways through the draft, with differing philosophies about the types of players they covet and how to acquire them.

And today, we're going to take a team-by-team look at how the Montréal Canadiens, Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes, and Vegas Golden Knights used the draft to suit their ends.

Montréal Canadiens

The value of player development

It's fitting that the upstart Habs have the most homegrown talent on their roster, with 14 players that they've drafted and developed in-house. They're not just the youngest team left in the playoffs, but the NHL's youngest team, period. How's that for being ahead of schedule?

Now, the obvious choice for their draft lesson was that volume is king. And it's true, to some degree. The Canadiens are in a tie with the Detroit Red Wings for the most picks made in the last five drafts, with 56 apiece. In Lane Hutson (62nd overall in 2022), Oliver Kapanen (64th overall in 2021), and Jakub Dobes (136th overall), they've made damn good use of that surplus capital, too; Hutson and Kapanen were both the second of two second-round picks, and Dobeš was the seventh pick the Habs had made in that 2020 draft despite being a fifth-rounder when they took him.

The more compelling lesson is one of development, though. Go up and down this roster and you'll find one example after another of a player developing well beyond their pedigree or what their draft-year tape would suggest was possible.

The Habs' decision to take Juraj Slafkovský first overall looks like a masterstroke of genius now, but there's a reason many in the public sphere greeted that choice with skepticism; among U18 first-time draft-eligible skaters in Liiga history, Slafkovský's 0.32 points per game is lower than our ninth-ranked prospect in this year's draft, defensive defenceman Alberts Smits, and ranks 46th overall among anyone who suited up for 15 or more games. His development into a credible first-line scoring threat was far from a foregone conclusion.

Hutson was the 62nd overall pick, not even the first choice for the Habs with their two second-rounders; legitimate concerns lingered about a smaller offensive defenceman with an average skating stride. Kapanen went 64th overall, and no one in the public sphere had him higher than 52nd on their board. Dobeš, meanwhile, didn't even make NHL Central Scouting's list. You can't even argue that a high-profile prospect like Ivan Demidov hasn't hit his absolute ceiling case as a rookie or that youngish players like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and maybe to a lesser degree Kaiden Guhle haven't found another level (or two) under head coach Martin St-Louis' tutelage.

What was their secret? Sometimes, it's as simple as throwing players in the deep end. I saw it in Vancouver covering the Canucks, as then-head coach Travis Green placed players like Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes into roles that matched their skillset and ceiling no sooner than they'd made the team; I saw it again when St. Louis got his hands on players like Hutson, Demidov, Slafkovský, Kapanen, perhaps even Dobeš.

It's not just about giving these players quality reps. It's about allowing them to play with linemates who can chart a path for them to follow, match their skill level, and give them quality puck touches. How would Slafkovský develop into a first-line forward, “earning” his ice-time on the fourth line with fourth-line calibre talents? Or Hutson playing prescribed minutes as a power play specialist exclusively on a sheltered third pair?

Drafting well is important. Developing the players you draft may be every bit if not more important. That's what the Habs teach us.

Colorado Avalanche

You don't always need the draft to develop talent in-house

The Golden Knights may be the poster child for the “f---- them picks" mindset in the NHL, but they have twice as many players on their roster that they drafted and developed in-house in the last 10 drafts – two to the Avalanche's one. Not like you can blame the scouts either. The Avs have only made 64 picks total since 2015, the fifth-fewest in that span, including two expansion teams that are spotting them a couple of drafts.

So what exactly can the Avs teach us about the draft? That's not the only way to find young, cost-controlled talent. There's also free agency. And if 808 of the 948 skaters to play a game in the NHL last season were drafted, that still leaves another 140 who could be had for naught but the cost of their entry-level contract. The Avs have three college free agents on their playoff roster as of this writing that they developed in-house, one of which, Sam Malinski, skated 18:56 a night this postseason, the seventh-highest mark on the team. They have six total if you count the likes of Joel Kiviranta, Jack Ahcan, and Nick Blankenburg.

Now, there aren't any all-stars in this group. Malinski's the best of the bunch, and he's turned into a capable top-four defenceman, all the more important during Cale Makar's absence at the start of the series. Blankenburg and Ahcan, meanwhile, have both performed admirably in depth roles, rounding out an Avalanche blueline that needed the help at the bottom of the lineup. And even on as talented a team as the Avs had assembled, you sometimes need cheap help at the margins. You wouldn't think it, but that's totally doable without significant draft capital.

Carolina Hurricanes

Volume is king

The Carolina Hurricanes haven't lacked for top-ten picks in the last decade and change. They've picked second-overall once (Andrei Svechnikov in 2018), fifth-overall twice (Noah Hanifin in 2015 and Elias Lindholm in 2013), and seventh-overall (Haydn Fleury in 2014 and Jeff Skinner in 2010) in the last decade and change. You'll note that, except for Svechnikov, though, these aren't the players spearheading the Hurricanes' third conference finals appearance in the last four seasons. Likewise, only Alexander Nikishin remains in the trade trees spawned by the other four prospects, taken with the third-round pick acquired in the trade that sent Skinner to the Buffalo Sabres.

This hasn't stopped the Hurricanes from developing into a model franchise and the gold standard for sustainable team building, as evidenced by their eight straight trips to the postseason and 812 standings points during that streak, second only to the Avalanche.

So, how have they done it? By taking more cracks at the bat than almost anyone else since the 2020 draft. Volume is the great leveller at the NHL Draft, and the 55 selections that the Hurricanes have made since 2020 rank second, behind only the Canadiens' and Detroit Red Wings' 56 picks apiece. If you expand that sample to 2015, the Hurricanes made 99 selections, second again to the Red Wings' 101.

And if volume is the great leveller, then the scouting acumen of the Hurricanes staff is the force multiplier that has allowed them to find top-of-the-lineup talent with the type of capital that usually yields depth. Oh, and they've found enough depth pieces to keep a steady stream of cost-controlled support at the margins of their lineup, too.

Who needs top-five picks when you're finding players like Sebastian Aho with the 35th-overall pick or Jaccob Slavin at 120th overall? If you're looking for a more contemporary example, how about Seth Jarvis at 13th or Nikishin 81st? Who needs to throw away good money at bad depth players when you can find Jackson Blake at 109th overall? Then there are all the players on their roster that they acquired with excess draft capital or prospects, like K'Andre Miller, Logan Stankoven, and Taylor Hall. And with the 14th-ranked prospect pool, there's more on the way, too.

Vegas Golden Knights

There's more than one way to use a draft pick

The Golden Knights have three prospects on their roster that they drafted and developed in-house. That number expands to four if you count their sole undrafted free agent on the roster that they developed in-house, Braeden Bowman, but he has yet to play in these playoffs. Five if you want to give them credit for Dylan Coghlan, who they signed out of the WHL in 2017, but he's been on four NHL teams and this is his second tour on the Golden Knights blueline – feels like a stretch.

This begs the question: How exactly are the Golden Knights a win away from booking their second trip to the Stanley Cup Final in the last five seasons if you're supposed to draft and develop championship hockey teams? Well, there's more than one way to use a draft pick. I didn't plan on digging into my memory of Capital for this article, but if the Habs and the Hurricanes are exemplary looks at maximizing use value out of draft picks, then Golden Knights (and to more or less the same degree the Avs) are the models for using draft picks for their exchange value.

Of course, it helps to draft well, too. The only thing more valuable than a first-round pick when you're trying to pry a difference-maker from a seller's roster at the deadline is a former first-round pick who's outplaying their draft position. Erik Brännström may be a bust now, plying his trade in Switzerland, but the Golden Knights were able to move him at the height of his value during a strong draft-plus-one season to acquire Mark Stone. I'm not sure if Peyton Krebs was the centrepiece in the trade to acquire Jack Eichel, but his inclusion in that deal certainly moved the needle. Turning Zach Dean into Ivan Barbashyov helped them win their first Cup and is still paying off three years later. Tomáš Hertl may be struggling this season, but that clutch 4-3 game-winning goal sure helped the other night, and he wouldn't be a Golden Knight were it not for the value that general manager Kelly McCrimmon was able to extract from David Edstrom amid a strong draft-plus-one season.

And sometimes, yeah, you can just trade a draft pick and get a pretty good return on your investment. The Golden Knights have made 30 picks in the last five seasons, the third-fewest of any team in the NHL. Doesn't seem to be hurting them. Not now anyway. At some point, perhaps some point relatively soon, it's going to catch up with them. Ageing curves are what they are, and in an NHL where the cap is growing annually and allowing teams to comfortably retain their own talent, eventually, the Golden Knights are going to run out of ways to keep this ship afloat. For now, though, it's smooth sailing as they seem poised to make a third trip to the Stanley Cup Final in their first nine season. That's what it's all about.