Early on, Helsinki General Manager Jukka Tuominen called this season a “rebuilding year” for his club. And to be fair, some demolition work did take place. Only the when all the dust settled, all the other teams were left in ruins and it was the Jokerit who were the lone team left standing to hoist the EURO Cup, their third in the last four seasons.

In the Finals, they beat Munich in 4 games, winning the first game on a Patrik Laine OT goal and then out-scoring the Red Bulls 15-3 over the following three games.

They also dispatched Paris in 4 games in the conference finals after beating Belfast in 5 games and Stockholm in 6. They finished third overall in the regular season, led by Connor McDavid’s 71 goals and 165 points.

Look out for this team when Tuominen and Coach Brent Sutter finally declare them “built.”

Captain McDavid seemed to slow a bit from his blistering, record-setting pace after the regular season ended, but he did enough to lead all EURO players in playoff scoring with 9 goals and 23 assist across 19 games. Seven of the top 9 playoff scorers in the league were Helsinki players, including McDavid, linemates Brock Boeser and Patrik Laine, as well as Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Mikko Lehtonen, Ryan Strome and Swedish defenseman Jacob Moverare. Moverare and Henri Jokiharju really came to play in the Finals and both were +8 in the series, while the second forward line of Kotkaniemi, Lehtonen and Strome was +6.

Lehtonen provided the biggest talking point of the playoffs when he was called for a match penalty after a vicious hit on Paris’ Filip Forsberg that sidelined the Rouge Eiffel scoring star for the whole series. Lehtonen was suspended for one game but openly mocked the older Paris team from the press box that game. The Rouge Eiffels were unable to recover, mainly because they were focused on the fact their favorite Paris restaurant had announced a chicken and dumpling early bird special later in the week.

Tuominen’s big rebuild included a blockbuster trade and some really old guys. The trade in a second. But first this: Usually, rebuilds of car and houses and such don’t include the addition of really old parts about to wear out. But Helsinki signed old-timers Jeff Skinner, 36, and Logan Couture, 39, as free agents in the off season and then made a trade with Gothenburg to take in Sean Couturier, 36.

But it was Helsinki’s off season trading with Oslo that was the springboard for their success.

Tuominen, after watching John Carlson and Erik Karlsson retire and Tyler Seguin and Sergei Mozyakin leave for free agency, traded Nerius Alisauskas, Nate Danielson, Dmitri Simashev and 2031 Round 1 pick to Oslo for McDavid. And then he went back to Norway, delivering Kyle Connor, Danny Nelson, Fabian Lysell and 2030 Round 1 pick to Oslo for Moverare.

Then in trades with Tallinn and Gothenburg, he rounded out the defense corps with Alexei Bereglazov and Gregory Beron and added fourth-line forward Jakub Vrana