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“NHL-O Canada-Woe Canada”
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Game 1-of the NHL Stanley Cup finals is upon us. The Edmonton Oilers are hoping to go where no Canadian team has gone in decades.
A skate around the ice with the Cup when this series is over with the Florida Panthers.
Canada, which invented the game, has been missing from the ceremonies.
Canada, which gave us the Flying Frenchmen, Maple Leaf Gardens, Gretzky-Messier-Kurri-Fuhr has not celebrated in a long time.
Canada, home to Foster Hewitt, Danny Gallivan, Don Cherry and Hockey Night in Canada, has been muzzle in saluting their sports with their flag with the Cup.
Why and How? Will it end shortly?
A close up look at the Stanley Cup finals sans Canadian teams, courtesy of TSN:
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For a second straight spring, the Edmonton Oilers have a chance to bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada.
After coming agonizingly close last year by forcing a Game 7 with the Florida Panthers following a 3-0 series deficit only to come up short in the deciding game, Connor McDavid and co. have another shot at those very same Panthers. Whether or not the last Canadian team standing in the NHL playoffs will be rallied around by the rest of the country is always a matter of debate, but what isn’t is that the lengthy championship drought in Canada’s national sport has become a sore spot from coast-to-coast.
It’s been 11,682 days since a Canadian team has hoisted the Stanley Cup.
If you are 32 or younger, you have never seen a Canadian team win a Stanley Cup.
Since a Canadian team last won the Stanley Cup, Quebec City lost its team. Winnipeg lost its team, but then got another one back. Vancouver got a basketball team and then lost it. The Montreal Expos split time in Puerto Rico for a bit and then moved to Washington, DC.
Yes, the world has changed more than a great deal since that night when Gary Bettman handed the Stanley Cup over to Guy Carbonneau on June 9, 1993 after the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Los Angeles Kings in five games to make it 24 championships. Nobody knew that night would begin a drought for Canadian hockey that has lasted into a fourth decade. How could they? In the 32 years preceding the Canadiens’ Cup in 1993, a Canadian team had claimed Lord Stanley’s Mug on 20 occasions. Why wouldn’t that continue?
Well, for a couple of major reasons. Expansion, of course, was a big one. By 1993, there were 24 teams in the NHL. That was up four from the previous two seasons. Five years after that, it was 27 and now today, we’re at 32 with only seven of those playing north of the 49th parallel. When fewer than 25 per cent of the league’s teams are Canadian, your chances of winning have steeply declined.
The biggest factor, though, is money. Its American cousin has hammered the Canadian dollar’s purchasing power for much of the past 30-plus years. In 1991, the Canadian dollar reached nearly $0.90 USD. That would be the high point for the decade. It would nosedive for a majority of the next 10 years with the low point coming in 2002 when the Loonie bottomed out at $0.6179 USD. While the CDN flirted with parity at a number of points during the aughts and even went above the USD in 2011, it would crash back down again by 2015. Fluctuations have been relatively muted over the past 10 years with the CDN settling in around the $0.68-to-$0.75 USD range, but that still represents a steep surcharge for the seven teams who pay their players in American dollars and collect revenue in Canadian.
Still, the drought has almost ended a number of times over these past 32 years. When the Oilers take the ice on Wednesday night at Rogers Place, they will be the seventh Canadian team to skate in a final and just might be the best positioned to hang a banner in the Great White North come next fall. We all know what happened last year, but let’s take a look back at the other six teams that tried and failed since the Habs last won in 1993.
