People make a big deal about the Maple Leafs’ half-century-plus since their last Stanley Cup win. While that’s bad, I have to point out that in a league that had 20+ teams for most of that time, not winning the championship in 56 years isn’t that embarrassing. You know what is embarrassing? It’s now been thirty years since a Canadian team has won the cup.
That’s quite unlikely statistically, given that the Canadian teams have made up between a fifth and a third of teams during that time. We have a tendency to focus on the Leafs’ drought because we love piling on the misery for Leaf fans. But consider this: the last Canadian cup win (Montreal, 1993) is now closer in time to the Leafs' last Cup win than the present. And since the last Leaf cup win was also the last season of the Original Six, the 1993 cup win is now also closer in time to the Original Six era than the present. For that matter, the Canadian cup drought (30 years) is now longer than the Original Six era itself (25 years.)
But wait, I’ve got lots of these: How long is the Canadian Cup Drought?
- It's more than one quarter of the NHL's existence.
- When Montreal won that cup, they had to beat the Quebec Nordiques in the first round.
- Long-time coach Randy Carlyle was in the league in 1993 — as a player.
- He was one of five players without helmets.
- That season, there were a bunch of neutral-site games. They included games in Dallas, Phoenix and Miami.
- Gary Bettman had been on the job four months.
- Martin St. Louis, Paul Kariya, Chris Pronger, Marian Hossa, Daniel Alfredsson, Roberto Luongo, and Daniel and Henrik Sedin had not played in the NHL in 1993, and Jayna Hefford, Angela Ruggiero, Hayley Wickenheiser, and Kim St-Pierre had not played for their national teams yet. They're all in the Hall of Fame now.
- Speaking of the Women’s national teams, the Women’s World Championship had only been held twice. The Americans still hadn’t come close to winning it.
- Only two NHL arenas from that season are still in use.
- Fourteen American teams have won the cup since 1993. That includes four cities that didn't have teams in 1993. Regardless of who wins this year, Las Vegas or Miami will become the fifteenth and fifth such city, respectively.
- Worse, during the drought, both Colorado and Tampa Bay won a cup, rebuilt, and then won another cup with a totally different team.
- Since 1993, Canadian teams have won championships in the NBA and MLS, despite the fact that in 1993 there were no Canadian teams in the NBA, and the MLS did not exist.
For the first ten years of the drought, you could explain it through economics. Between a low Canadian dollar and the lack of a salary cap, most of the Canadian teams could barely stay in business, nevermind create or keep a winner. And two of the teams that had the money to compete — Montreal and Toronto — seemed content to shuffle along with mediocre teams and hope for the best.
After the 2004-05 Lockout, the salary cap was installed, and the Canadian dollar recovered, putting teams on an even footing. And somehow that still didn't help. The salary cap is now 18 years old, the economics will even support a competitive team in Winnipeg, and we still can’t win a cup.
For a while I thought Canadian teams' lack of success was due to their tendency to tweak a mediocre team rather than go into rebuild mode. Canadians have a belief that hockey is all about heart so you just need to squeak into one of the last playoff positions then rely on the players' character to win the day. So there's always pressure to trade a draft pick for that one gritty winger. The result was that Canadian teams stayed in the good-but-not-great level.
I'd also heard the explanation that the lack of media oversight of American teams was an advantage here. The General Manager of a Canadian team is constantly being asked about how they're going to make the team better right now. Whereas an American GM has to answer maybe three media questions a year, so if they want to undergo a thorough rebuild, there won't be much complaining. Once again, Americans have just the right amount of enthusiasm for hockey.
But no, that's not it either. Toronto went through a complete rebuild, and to some extent most of the other teams have rebuilt, and the new highly-skilled teams have been no more successful than any hastily-thrown-together team of gritty veterans.
Another explanation you often hear is the difficulty of getting free agents to come to, or stay in, Canada. The reason being: your choice of weather, taxes, or the media fishbowl. But I don't buy that. For the most part, Canadian teams have been able to keep their stars together for several cup runs. Yes, there are nightmare examples like Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk leaving Calgary, but that probably had more to do with Coach Darryl Sutter's toxic culture. As for signing big-name free agents from elsewhere, that's not usually a route to success in the NHL. Even successful American teams are mostly home-grown and traded-for players.
So I'm running out of ideas. One explanation I've heard is that even when a team like Toronto commits to skill, they still hedge their bets by complimenting the skilled core with traditional big old slow guys who hold the team back. So, let’s go with that for now.
It may well be that we're just cursed. That sounds reasonable - we've surely disrespected the game as much or more than the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth. And whoever the gods of hockey are, I suspect they are truly vengeful.
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