The playoffs’ final four teams: Lessons to learn (and what to avoid)

We’re down to four teams in the NHL playoffs, which means it’s time for the copycats to get to work.

We’re constantly told that this is a copycat league, one where teams look to the contenders to see what’s working, then steal that plan. Plagiarism for the win, or at least the .500 record. Yesterday, Shayna had some suggestions for what teams can learn from this year's success stories.

From a fan's perspective, that’s all well and good, as long as teams are borrowing the right ideas. That’s where we come in, with our annual attempt to guide the conversation in the right direction. As fans, we don’t mind a little bit of copying as long as it’s the fun ideas that are being stolen. What we don’t want is for teams to learn lessons that make this league more boring.

So today, we’ll continue our annual tradition of looking for three fun lessons from each of the remaining teams. And we’ll also find one that isn’t as much fun, and try to shoot it down early. We can’t stop NHL teams from copying off each other’s papers, but we can at least try to steer them in a more fan-friendly direction.

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