No easy answer for likely freeze-out
Were it not for those interlopers in Buffalo and Columbus, the seven Canadian NHL franchises would presently occupy the bottom three spots in the Eastern Conference and the bottom four spots in the West.
It has been a relentless march downward. From the point about a month ago when it became clear that the season might end with zero Canadian teams in the playoffs, they have collectively gone about ensuring that fact. Montreal, which once seemed like the team most likely to reverse its swoon, is instead still suffering the absence of one of its franchise players and picking fights with the other one. Ottawa, despite a three- game win streak, still has to climb over four other teams to get to a playoff position and, in the West, all four Canadian teams are now firmly looking up at the Arizona Coyotes, as ignominious as that sounds.
The increasing likelihood of a post- season shutout in this country is bound to spark plenty of discussion about the deeper meaning of it all. This season’s passing would mark 22 years since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup, when once they did it with regularity.
Is there an explanation for why the teams in the country where hockey is most beloved are consistently losing to teams in the country where it remains something of a niche curiosity? My hot take: No. It’s tempting to try to identify a common thread that holds Canada’s teams back from NHL success, something that is specific to this country that could be addressed and overcome, but the explanation is much less provincial: bad management, and bad luck.
Start with the luck part first: it’s not like Canadian teams have been collectively terrible for two decades. There have been a lot of good teams and a lot of good years in there. Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton have all made Stanley Cup Finals in the past dozen years. If any of those had gone the other way — and there’s plenty of evidence that any one playoff series depends as much on happenstance as anything else — then the narrative about Canada’s Stanley Cup drought immediately goes poof.
The bad management part is fairly evident in the fact that the longest-tenured general manager among Canadian teams is Bryan Murray in Ottawa, who has been in that role since 2007. Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto all have GMs who have been on the job for less than two years. Each team has its own reasons for failure, but that’s hardly unique to the Can-
Yes, none of the teams in this country has won a Stanley Cup since Montreal in 1993, but the same is also true of 11 U. S. franchises. The last 21 championships have been shared among only 12 teams. That l i st demonstrates that there is no single formula to building a successful Cup winner. The New Jersey Devils won three times with a stiflingly boring team backstopped by a perennial all- star in net. The Detroit Red Wings won twice led by a generational forward in Steve Yzerman and twice more with a generational defenceman in Nicklas Lidstrom. Anaheim won a Cup with Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, two Hall of Famers, on defence. Pittsburgh got Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. The Carolina Hurricanes sit on the list seemingly only as evidence of the randomness and unpredictability that the Stanley Cup playoffs can produce. They had some good young players and a hot goalie and two months later they were the champions.
More recently, Chicago and Los Angeles have won five of six Cups with deep rosters that were the product of good drafting and deft salary-cap management.
It’s true that there are some factors common to the Canadian teams that don’t affect those in the United States. The weak dollar is a problem, but it wasn’t weak for a good stretch of the past two decades, and the salary cap keeps wealthier U.S. franchises from being able to dramatically exploit a currency difference. (Plus, the big-market Canadian teams are going to be financially competitive with any U. S. team even when our dollar is weak.) Some of the small- market Canadian teams might have a harder time wooing free agents, but in a league where the vast majority of players are not American, that should have a limited impact. This isn’t the NBA.
Do the Canadian markets, as is sometimes suggested, smother their teams with love? Is there so much attention on them that it imperils their chance at success? If so, this would have to be a problem that is unique to hockey. It isn’t.
Canada’s teams haven’t won a Cup in forever, it’s true, but that’s not because they are Canadian.