Moneypuck

Statistician Nate Silver made a name for himself by accurately predicting the 2012 U.S. election, and today he's taking on an even more difficult and controversial subject: why Canadian teams never win the Stanley Cup.  With the elimination of the Ottawa Senators - the last Canadian team standing in this year's playoffs - the winless streak is now at twenty years.  There are of course more American teams in the NHL; only seven of the thirty teams are Canadian, and it was just six for most of those two decades.  But still, that's a fifth of the teams, so you'd think they'd win at least once given all those years.  What are the chances of rolling a die twenty times without ever rolling a one?  That's more likely than twenty years without Canadians winning the cup.

He makes a good point about the financial reasons:  for the first half of the drought, the Canadian dollar was low, and there was no salary cap.  Since NHL salaries are negotiated and paid out exclusively in American dollars, but U.S. TV rights don't bring in much money, a Canadian NHL team gets most of its income in Canadian dollars, then pays out most of it in U.S. dollars.  So the Canadian teams were barely staying in business, never mind paying big bucks for star players.  Without a salary cap, there was nothing to stop more profitable American teams from outspending them.  But for the second half of the drought, the Canadian dollar has been strong, putting the Canadian teams on a stronger financial footing.  Now they could outspend most American teams, but aren't allowed to, thanks to the salary cap.

Beyond that, he doesn't really have much to say, beyond the idea that it's bad luck. (After all, it's not like Canadian teams don't get to the finals; that's happened five times during the drought.)  He does proffer the idea that the enthusiasm of Canadian fans takes away an incentive to improve the team, though I don't really buy that: thanks to the salary cap - and the less-famous salary floor - winning and losing teams cost about the same, so you don't save money by having a no-talent (i.e. cheap) team.

Still, the article is worth reading as it does have lots of interesting analysis of the strength of the local hockey markets, giving a better idea of just how the size of a city and the rabidness of a fan base affect a team's profitability.  It's an argument lots of people have in the absence of any facts, so it's nice to see an attempt to put numbers behind it, even if they mostly do confirm what everyone (except Gary Bettman) already suspects.

But seriously, a team called the Toronto Legacy?  Stick to numbers, Nate.