NHL teams in Canada are struggling
The National Hockey League sees its regular season go for another two months. This is good news for all seven teams that play in Canada, because currently, none of them would see the postseason.
Hockey is the Canadian pastime, very much like the National Football League is to America. When you think hockey, you think about cold weather up in Nova Scotia and kids playing out on the ponds of Ontario, dreaming one day o being the next Wayne Gretzky or Martin Brodeur. In Canada, nobody cares about the quarterback on the high school football team, it is about being the dominant forward on the Junior team.
The Great White North has sustained a bit of a drought in recent times, with the NHL being dominated by the American teams. It has to be tough for Canada to sit there and watch a non-traditional market like Anaheim, Los Angeles or Dallas raise the Stanley Cup time and time again, while all of its storied teams sit on the sidelines. Since 1993, when the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Los Angeles Kings in five games in the Stanley Cup Final, no Canadian team has won the game’s ultimate prize.
There have been some close calls, but ultimately no cigar. For much of the 2000s, the Vancouver Canucks have been on of the best teams in the game. Vancouver did reach the Stanley Cup Final on one occasion, and lost despite being heavily favored over the Boston Bruins. Game 7 was even in Vancouver. The Ottawa Senators once reached the Final, but were easily dispatched by the Anaheim Ducks in five games. In 2006, the Edmonton Oilers made a Cinderella run from the eighth seed in the Western Conference, only to lose in seven games to the Carolina Hurricanes.
Perhaps the most painful defeat was in 2004, when the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Calgary Flames in another series that went the full distance. In Game 6 with Calgary leading 3-2 in the series, it appeared to all the world that Martin Gelinas had given Calgary a late third-period lead. The play – which was ruled a no-goal on the ice – was reviewing and although the puck clearly crossed the goal line, the call stood. Calgary lost in double overtime and then, eventually, in Game 7.
Regardless of whether a Canadian team sneaks into the playoffs this year, the state of the seven clubs is hideous. The Toronto Maple Leafs are a last-place joke, the Flames and Oilers are bottom-feeders, the Winnipeg Jets are floundering and Canucks are nothing to write home about either. In fact, the worst four teams in the West are the aforementioned quartet. Montreal started hotter than any team in the league, but is 1-8-1 in its last 10 and sitting at a dismal .500.
It’s been a rough stretch in Canadian hockey, and there is no end in sight.
