The Edmonton Oilers could end their Canadian Stanley Cup drought with a win in Game 7

Canada’s identity as a hockey nation was shaped, at least in part, by its ubiquity. Between 1893, when the Stanley Cup was first awarded, and 1994, there had never been a period of more than two seasons in which a Canadian team did not play for the NHL championship, and only sixteen Stanley Cup finals in that century. span consisted of zero Canadian teams. And even as the NHL expanded far beyond the original six, Canadian teams still led the way: The Stanley Cup Finals featured at least one Canadian team in nine of the eleven seasons between 1983 and 1994, and eight of those teams won the cup in the final. end.

But since 1994, when the Vancouver Canucks lost a thrilling seven-game series to the New York Rangers, the NHL’s Canadian teams have been only fleeting competitors for the Stanley Cup. Only six teams from the North have reached the NHL championship series. None of them have won, although the Edmonton Oilers can end that drought Monday night by beating the Florida Panthers in Game 7 of this year’s Stanley Cup Final.

“There has to be a curse,” Craig Button, a former NHL manager and scout who now serves as a hockey analyst for Canada’s TSN Network, told the National Post early this season. “What else could explain it all?”

Oh, there are plenty of possible explanations: free agents preferring to play in the low- or no-tax Sun Belt cities that now populate the NHL, with the added bonus of nice weather; the feeling that playing in the United States offers players much greater opportunities to market their celebrity; the perceived economic disadvantages faced by Canadian teams in the smaller market; and the fact that Canadian hockey fans buy tickets even if their team is bad, so why worry too much about being good? There’s also a handy bogeyman in longtime NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, an American who oversaw the NHL’s expansion well south of the 49th parallel.

“These are tough markets to be successful in,” Canadian-born Vincent Damphousse, a member of the 1993 Montreal Canadiens team and the last Canadian franchise to win the Stanley Cup, told the Associated Press. “It’s been tough. There have been renovations, good and bad years, and I certainly hope for a success story in Canada. I don’t wish bad luck on the Canadian teams.”

Whatever the reason, no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since the 1993 Canadiens. It’s a statistical improbability: In 2022, Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn found that the odds of such a drought among the NHL’s seven Canadian franchises were 0 was .7 percent. There was a higher chance (1 percent) that Canadian teams had won more than ten titles in that period, based on the underlying statistics.

“The Canadian teams have been out in the cold long enough,” Quebec-born former NHL player and broadcaster Bill Clement once said. “It’s their turn.”

Clement made this comment not recently, but in 2002, when three Canadian teams reached the Eastern Conference semifinals. But it wasn’t to be. Hailing from that famous hockey mecca of Raleigh, NC, the Carolina Hurricanes first eliminated the Canadiens in the East semifinals, and then the Toronto Maple Leafs in the conference finals. The drought continued.

There have been several close calls. In 2004, the Calgary Flames lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven games, with some feeling that the Flames’ Martin Gelinas was robbed of what could have been the Cup goal late in Game 6 (the game was unreviewed).

In the next Stanley Cup Final, the Oilers erased a 3–1 series deficit against the Carolina Hurricanes, but also fell in Game 7. The Ottawa Senators played for the Stanley Cup in 2007 and lost to the Anaheim Ducks in five games. In 2011, the Vancouver Canucks had home ice advantage and won the first two games of their series against the Boston Bruins, but they lost Game 7 at home after scoring just eight goals in the entire series, the fewest of any team in a played a match. seven-game series in NHL history. The Canadiens were the most recent Canadian team to try, but they meekly fell to the Lightning in 2021.

The Oilers, who became just the 10th NHL team to erase a 3-0 deficit, can end this stunning drought for Canadian NHL teams with a win in South Florida on Monday night.

“All of Canada is behind you. Let’s bring the Cup home,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on social media at the start of the Stanley Cup final.