How to Bring the Cup Back to Canada

Canadian-based teams might not have won the Cup since 1993, but Canadian players certainly have.

Question: What does Canada need to do to reclaim the Stanley Cup?

Answer: Nothing. The Stanley Cup is and will always be Canadian!

Seventeen years have now passed since a Canadian-based NHL franchise won the Stanley Cup. For some, the fact that this Canadian cultural icon has been in American hands since 1994 is akin to a national disgrace. But I would argue that Canada has never truly lost the Stanley Cup and likely never will. While the 2010 Stanley Cup finals will yet again be a matchup of two American-based teams – the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers – Canadian content will still be much in evidence.

The Blackhawks and Flyers both boast a higher percentage of Canadian players in their regular lineups than either the Montreal Canadiens or the Vancouver Canucks, the two Canadian-based teams that came closest to returning Lord Stanley's mug north of the border this year. Moreover, no matter which team captain gets to raise the ultimate hockey prize – Chicago's Winnipeg-born Jonathon Toews or Philadelphia's Mike Richards, a native of Kenora, Ontario – he will be a Canadian boy living out the ultimate Canadian sporting dream. The victorious captain, like all others on the winning squad, will have a personal day or two with the Cup, thereby ensuring that the trophy will indeed return to several locales across the country this summer, just as it has each year since 1993. So there is no need to fret about Canada being “Cupless.”

More importantly, the Stanley Cup remains Canadian in every way that truly counts. The Cup has been part of our history since 1893. It is the Canadian passion for hockey that has transformed it into a treasured prize, and raised it to iconic status. Canadians still follow the yearly quest for the Cup with greater interest than any other people. Thus, we should view the Stanley Cup as if we were the parents of a gifted child who has left home and garnered praise and adulation abroad. We should celebrate that others have come to both admire and desire it, but we can rest assured in the knowledge that no one understands and loves “Stanley” like we do.

In that sense the Stanley Cup will always be Canadian. Of course, there will be a wonderful celebration when our “child” finally returns home for an extended visit, but we will love it and claim it as ours no matter where it takes up residence: Chicago or Philadelphia, and, yes, even Anaheim or Tampa Bay. Stanley is part of our family wherever he goes.