It’s Okay, We Never Really Liked Hockey Anyway.

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.