We’re five weeks into the playoffs. Do you know who your favorite team will be copying?If not, you will soon. This is the time of year where we’re constantly reminded that the NHL is a copycat league, one where the teams that have success establish the blueprint for everyone else. This year, that’s the Montreal Canadiens, Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights.But while the copying might be inevitable, the lessons the other 28 teams learn from the four winners are still to be determined. That’s where we come in. Every now and then, we try to nudge all those copycats towards answers that make the league more fun, not less. After all, the NHL is an entertainment product. And while winning is more entertaining than losing, we’d rather see teams do that by being fun.So today, we’re going to look at all four conference finalists and try to highlight three lessons from each that we wouldn’t mind seeing everyone else copy. And we’ll also find one lesson we really hope doesn’t catch on.Vegas Golden KnightsFun lesson 1: Always be big-game huntingWe all know the deal by now, because it’s become the Vegas trademark. Somewhere in the league, a star player becomes available. We all makes jokes about the Golden Knights landing them, which are funny because the team actually has no cap space and/or assets to actually make it happen. Then the star player ends up in Vegas anyway, and we all wonder why our teams can’t do that.Does it get annoying after a while? If you’re a fan of another team, sure. But the league would be a lot more fun if every team took the Vegas approach, instead of the patient, low-risk, long-term view most seem to favor.Fun lesson 2: Go ahead and change coaches at the last minuteI went back and forth on including this one. Is seeing a team switch coaches so late in the season actually fun, or was it just weird? Either way, the fact that the Islanders followed suit might suggest we should get used to this move, which had never really been in anyone’s playbook that wasn’t Lou Lamoriello.Fun lesson 3: The draft isn’t everythingThe draft is fun. That’s especially true if your team has some picks to work with, and maybe a track record of hitting on them. But if they don’t, the draft — or at least the talk about how it’s the only way to build — can be a bummer.The Knights are a reminder it doesn’t have to be that way. In their eight drafts, you could argue they’ve one really knocked one pick out of the park, and that guy never played a game for them. The rest of their history is a whole bunch of whiffs, mixed in with a few dribblers and some occasional solid contact.Is that the way to build a contender? Not for most teams, but it’s nice to remember there’s more than one path.And one lesson to avoid: Be jerksThat might be a little bit over-the-top, and I’ll grant you there’s a fine line between wishing more teams took the win-at-all-costs approach while scolding them for how they go about it.But whether it’s potentially tampering with UFAs or the controversial signing of Carter Hart or refusing to meet their media obligations or whatever’s going on with Bruce Cassidy, at some point you start to wonder if there isn’t a line somewhere. Would you feel differently if it was your team? Probably, because all fans are hypocrites that way, at least to an extent. But man, this is becoming a tough team to root for.Colorado AvalancheFun lesson 1: Goaltending isn’t unsolvableIt’s the most important position in hockey, and also the most unpredictable. And as a fan, it’s tempting to conclude that if you don’t have one of the two or three truly elite guys, you’re just left hoping whoever you do have is going to get hot at the right time. And since those two or three elite guys are never available, everyone else has to just resign themselves to being at the mercy of the random number generator in their crease.Then you have the Avalanche. A season ago, they had lousy goaltending. That was bad. So they went out and made a pair of trades and got better goaltending.It sounds simple. It is simple. But it’s worth remembering the next time some GM somewhere shrugs and tells you goaltending is too hard to fix. Smart teams can do it, and do it successfully. (We think.)Fun lesson 2: The regular season can still matterEvery hockey fan knows the feeling that can hang over the NHL’s regular season, where we spend six months analyzing every game while wondering if any of it will actually matter. Some years, it feels like the only point to the season is dividing the league into two halves: the playoff teams and the playoff misses. Beyond that, once you get to the playoffs it’s all chaos. Fun chaos, sure, but also the kind that makes November feel kind of pointless.This year’s Avalanche are a reminder that it doesn’t always turn out that way. In a year where three Central teams were fighting for top spot in the conference, the Avs pulled away from the pack. Their reward: starting the playoffs with the equivalent of a first-round bye, followed by a meeting with a good but tired Minnesota Wild team where the extra rest could have been a deciding factor.That’s how it’s supposed to work. And sometimes it does. Remember that next winter when you’re wondering how much the dog days actually matter.Fun lesson 3: Second stints are funSports fans love a good reunion story. I remember growing up as a Blue Jays fan, looking forward to the annual Tony Fernandez acquisition that signaled the season was getting serious. Most teams around the sports world have their guy who fits that storyline.And sure, sometimes — maybe even most of the time — these kinds of moves don’t work, because a beloved player is too old or the dynamic has shifted. But when it does work, retreads become a fun combination of nostalgia for the past and excitement for the future.In a year where our other conference finalists largely sat out the deadline, the Avs went out and brought back Nazem Kadri. He’s been good-but-not-great so far, but there’s still time for him to join the list of second-stint success stories.And one lesson to avoid: Keep the same coach for a decadeOK, technically Jared Bednar still has a few months before he hits the ten-year mark. But he’s the second-longest-serving coach in the league, behind only Jon Cooper. And he highlights an interesting dynamic in this year’s final four, which features three of the four longest-serving coaches in the league, plus one who showed up at the very last minute.The occasional forever-coach can be fun — if they can earn it with sustained success. Bednar (and Cooper) can check that box. But most coaches can’t, which is why keeping the same one for too long can be riskier than biting the bullet and making a change that needs to be made.Montreal CanadiensFun lesson 1: Rebuilds aren’t foreverThey don’t even have to be the traditional five-year project, at least in the way so many modern GMs mean it where we’re told we have to wait that long to see any progress whatsoever. Instead, the Habs have pulled off what Mirtle argues may be one of the best short-term rebuilds we’ve seen. It’s hard to argue.That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it does mean fans shouldn’t be expected to tune out for a half-decade or more just because rebuilds have to take forever. They clearly don’t.Fun lesson 2: Picks can be ammoThis lesson is related to the last, but deserves its own mention. With most rebuilds, we end up seeing teams stockpile picks as part of the teardown phase. But those same teams are often reluctant to do anything with those picks other than use them, and then wait years for the players they draft to have an impact (if they ever do).That can work, but it’s not always an especially exciting process to watch play out. And the Habs are a reminder that just because you have a bunch of picks doesn’t mean you have to use them. Instead, Montreal has been willing move picks for more immediate help, like Noah Dobson, Kirby Dach and Game 7 hero Alex Newhook.All of those players were young enough that the Canadiens were still making the moves with an eye towards the future. But yes, there are options other than sitting back and waiting (and waiting and waiting) for a cupboard full of picks to pay off. Timing matters, and sometimes moving those picks — even firsts — can make sense for a rebuilding team.Fun lesson 3: You don’t just have to keep hiring the same dozen coachesAs a fan, I don’t mind seeing guys like John Torotorella and Rick Bowness make their way around the league, because there’s something to be said for the veteran coach who becomes one of the league’s recurring characters. But at some point, you have to welcome some new blood. And seeing a team go off the board can be fun … when it works.It’s worked in Montreal, where Martin St. Louis went from coaching his kids to the NHL. I’ll admit that when the move was announced, I wasn’t sold. I was wrong. If anything, I don’t think we’re appreciating the job St. Louis has done enough. And it’s entirely possible the Canadiens wouldn’t be where they are today if they’d just hired Michel Therrien or Claude Julien for the seventh time.And one lesson to avoid: Skip the trade deadlineIn the cap era, trade deadline day has often felt like it was on life support as a league full of GMs struggled to pull off major midseason moves. It didn’t help when we saw teams like the 2018 Washington Capitals and 2019 St. Louis Blues all but sit out the deadline and still win, so it was a relief to see deadline deals like Artturi Lehkonen to Colorado and Brad Marchand to Florida pay off in recent years.This year, we may be in rough shape. Of the four teams left, only Colorado did much of anything at this year’s deadline. That’s bad news for deadline fans hoping to keep some of that recent momentum, and good news for timid GMs who want their fan bases to think taking it easy is the right strategy.Carolina HurricanesFun lesson 1: Big swings can pay off, even if you missIn today’s risk-averse NHL, it often feels like the first question any team asks when there’s an opportunity to do anything interesting is “But what if it doesn’t work?”This year’s Hurricanes are providing a fun answer to that question: OK, so what if it doesn’t?They took a big swing last year when they acquired Mikko Rantanen, with the intent of making him a long-term piece. He didn’t want that. It didn’t work. So they pivoted, sent him to Dallas, and are watching Logan Stankoven have the sort of playoff breakout fans dream about.Smart teams have a Plan B. And that allows them to go after a Plan A while other teams are talking themselves out of doing anything at all.Fun lesson 2: Sometimes, an aging former star can rediscover their sparkIt’s always a fun story when it plays out in the sports world. But we don’t see it often in hockey these days, especially once we all decided a player’s prime ends around 25 and it’s all downhill from there.So it’s kind of cool to see Taylor Hall emerge as a major story in this year’s playoffs, almost a decade after his MVP season and well past the point where he’d seemingly flipped to the journeyman’s script. Now the next time your favorite team brings in a known name on the wrong side of 30, you’ll at least be able to pretend it could work, instead of immediately assuming their knees will turn to sawdust after three shifts.Fun lesson 3: Giving the job to the ex-player can workNHL teams love to bring back a former star, whether it’s as coach or GM or presidents or whatever else. Whether it’s Mats Sundin or Steve Yzerman or Rick Tocchet or Danny Briere or Craig Conroy or the Sedin twins or whoever else, we see it all the time.And it’s not hard to be cynical about that kind of move, because there’s a pretty transparent PR element to each hire. You remember this guy, teams often seem to be saying. You had a poster of him in your bedroom when you were a kid.Usually, it doesn’t work. Sometimes it fails spectacularly. And when that happens, we can all say “I told you so.”But the twist here is that it’s more fun when it does work. And there may not be a better example than Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour, quite possibly the best coach in the league for the last half-decade. And even if he’s the exception that proves the rule, even in Carolina, it’s more fun for fans when we can pretend these hires have a chance.And one lesson to avoid: Have a cheap ownerOK, “cheap” is a bit of a loaded word, especially in a league where the cap floor is $70 million. But it’s fair to say Tom Dundon has a reputation for being frugal, as NBA fans are finding out. For the most part, it’s hard to argue with the success he’d had in Carolina, which isn’t exactly the league’s biggest market, even as the team spends well under the ceiling.If it works in Carolina, great. Just hope your team’s owner doesn’t start pointing at the Hurricanes as justification for pinching pennies.