Well, it’s another year of The Great Canadian Stanley Cup Drought. Last year, I made a post about how long it’s gone on, but this year, I’m trying to be more positive.
It was an oddity of watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander lead the Thunder to an NBA title while Canadian hockey teams couldn’t make it to the summit yet again. That got me thinking: while the past thirty-two years haven’t been good for Canada’s NHL teams, it has been a great time for sports we aren’t traditionally good at. You know, non-winter sports. So here is my list of things that Canadians have (rather surprisingly) won since the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup:
Athletics
- Men's 100 m Olympic gold (Donovan Bailey)
- Men's 4x100m Olympic gold (twice)
- Olympic Decathlon (Damian Warner)
Auto Racing
- Formula 1 world championship (Jacques Villeneuve)
- Indy 500 (Jacques Villeneuve)
- IndyCar championship (Jacques Villeneuve, Paul Tracy)
- DTM championship (Bruno Spengler)
Baseball
- MLB MVP (Larry Walker, Justin Morneau, Joey Votto)
- MLB Hall-of-Fame (Larry Walker)
- Batting title (three times for Larry Walker, one for Justin Morneau)
Basketball
- NBA MVP (Steve Nash twice, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
- NBA Finals MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
- NBA scoring title (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
- NBA Hall-of-Fame (Steve Nash)
- NCAA Consensus Player of the Year (Zach Edey)
Football
- NCAA All-American selection (Chuba Hubbard)
- CFL Most Outstanding Player (John Cornish, Brady Oliveira)
Golf
- Majors (Mike Weir, Brooke Henderson twice)
- Canadian Open (Brooke Henderson, Nick Taylor)
Mixed Martial Arts
- UFC welterweight championship (Carlos Newton, Georges St. Pierre)
- UFC middleweight championships (Georges St. Pierre)
Soccer
- Olympic gold (Women’s)
- Gold Cup (Men’s)
- FIFPRO Men's World 11 (For best player in the world at each position - Alphonso Davies)
- MLS MVP (Dwayne De Rosario)
Tennis
- U.S. Open (Bianca Andreescu)
- World Top Ten Rankings (Bianca Andreescu, Milos Raonic, Eugenie Bouchard)
- Davis Cup
- Billie Jean King Cup
So let’s concentrate on these positives. Nearly all of these achievements had never been done by a Canadian before that last Cup. Let’s not dwell on the fact that Steve Nash’s entire Hall-of-Fame career was during the drought, or that Bianca Andreescu, Brooke Henderson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Alphonso Davies weren’t even born the last time Canada won the Cup. Instead, just accept that we’re becoming more well-rounded sports-wise, whether we like it or not.
