Canada’s identity as a hockey nation was forged, at least in part, by ubiquity. Between 1893, when the Stanley Cup was first awarded, and 1994, there was never a span of more than two seasons in which a Canadian team did not play for the NHL championship, and only 16 Stanley Cup Finals during that century long. The period did not feature any Canadian teams. And even as the NHL expanded far beyond its Original Six, Canadian teams were still at the forefront: the Stanley Cup Finals featured at least one Canadian team in 9 of 11 seasons between 1983 and 1994, and eight of those teams lifted the cup in the end.
But since 1994, when the Vancouver Canucks lost a tense seven-game series to the New York Rangers, Canadian NHL teams have been only fleeting contenders for the Stanley Cup. Only six teams from the North have reached the NHL championship series. None of them have won, although the Edmonton Oilers can end that drought on Monday night by beating the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of this year’s Stanley Cup Final.
“There has to be a curse,” Craig Button, a former NHL executive and scout who now serves as a hockey analyst for Canada’s TSN network, told the National Post at the start of this season. “What else could explain it all?”
Oh, there are many possible explanations: free agents who would prefer to play in the low- or no-tax Sun Belt cities that now populate the NHL, with the added bonus of pleasant weather; the feeling that playing in the United States offers players many more possibilities to promote their celebrity; the alleged economic disadvantages faced by Canadian teams in smaller markets; and the fact that Canadian hockey fans will buy tickets even if their team is bad, so why worry too much about being good? There’s also a convenient bogeyman in longtime NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, an American who has led the NHL’s push to expand far south of the 49th parallel.
“These are tough markets to be successful in,” Canadian-born Vincent Damphousse, a member of the 1993 Montreal Canadiens team that was the last Canadian franchise to win the Stanley Cup, told the KeynoteUSA. “It has been hard. There have been rebuilds and good and bad years and I expect a success story in Canada, without a doubt. “I don’t wish bad luck to the Canadian teams.”
Whatever the reason, no Canadian team has lifted the Stanley Cup since those 1993 Canadiens. It’s a statistical improbability: in 2022, the Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn considered the likelihood of such a drought for the seven Canadian franchises in the NHL was 0.7 percent. There was a higher chance (1 per cent) that Canadian teams had won more than 10 titles in that span, based on the underlying metrics.
“Canadian teams have been left out for quite a while,” Quebec-born former NHL player and broadcaster Bill Clement once said. “It’s your turn”.
Clement made this comment not recently but in 2002, when three Canadian teams reached the Eastern Conference semifinals. But it was not like that. The Carolina Hurricanes, from that famous hockey mecca of Raleigh, North Carolina, first eliminated the Canadiens in the Eastern Semifinals and then the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Conference Finals. The drought continued.
There have been multiple situations where it was close. In 2004, the Calgary Flames lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven games, with some feeling that the Flames’ Martin Gelinas was robbed of what could have been the cup-clinching goal at the end of the game. 6 (the play was not reviewed).
In the following Stanley Cup Finals, the Oilers erased a 3-1 series deficit against the Carolina Hurricanes, but also fell in Game 7. The Ottawa Senators played for the Stanley Cup in 2007, losing to the Anaheim Ducks in five games. In 2011, the Vancouver Canucks had home field advantage and won the first two games of their series against the Boston Bruins, but lost Game 7 at home after scoring just eight goals in the entire series, the fewest of any team that played in a seven-game series in NHL history. The Canadiens were the most recent Canadian team to try, but fell tamely to the Lightning in 2021.
The Oilers, who became the 10th NHL team to erase a 3-0 series deficit, can end this baffling drought for Canada’s NHL teams on Monday night with a win in the South Florida.
“All of Canada has your back. Let’s bring the Cup home,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on social media at the start of the Stanley Cup final.
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