How to Bring the Cup Back to Canada

Building a championship hockey team is simply a matter of smart management and good player selection.

The NHL is a 30-team, professionally run business that has 24 members in the United States and six in Canada. And while a number of Canadian teams have made the final recently, none have managed to win the Stanley Cup since the Montreal Canadiens did in 1993.

For a number of the Canadian teams, simply competing on even terms financially between 1993 and 2005 was a difficult venture. It was a free spending era that saw salaries escalate, teams spend wildly, and free agents go where the big bucks were. The Canadian teams for the most part remained competitive, but they were unable to match the winning ways of teams like the New Jersey Devils, Colorado Avalanche, and Detroit Red Wings. In Colorado’s case, it was ironically the trade with Montreal that brought goaltender Patrick Roy to the Avalanche that elevated them to elite status.

During this time, Canadian teams made some exciting runs in the playoffs, but still there was no Cup victory.

After the Calgary Flames’ trip to the final in 2004 – a thrilling seven game series loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning – the NHL shutdown for an entire season due to the lockout. Upon its return, we the fans were introduced to a salary cap world where, for the first time since the 1920s, there was a level playing field in terms of what teams could spend.

That fact, coupled with some smart management, allowed that the Canadians teams to compete with the best in the league. The Edmonton Oilers made the final in 2006, with the Ottawa Senators doing the same in 2007. And Montreal made it through to the semi-finals this season.

Furthermore, the teams that have won the Cup over this past decade have been made up of more Canadian players than ever before. In fact every single winner between 2002 and 2007 had one more Canadian-born player on its roster than the previous winner. This year, the two teams that entered the playoffs with the most Canadian-born players – the Philadelphia Flyers and the Chicago Blackhawks – are now facing each other in the final, and both are captained by Canadians who were members of the gold medal-winning team in Vancouver.

Why all the angst about a Canadian city winning? Each season the Canadian teams face huge odds on account of there being four times as many U.S. teams in the NHL. There is nothing that can be done, decreed or otherwise, to change this beyond smart management and player selection. Keep that up and a Canadian team will eventually bring home the Cup.

So please, lets lose this defeatist, typically Canadian attitude that just because a Canadian city has not won a Cup in 18 seasons, it somehow reflects badly on this country.