You know the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup?


Yes, this marks the 25th anniversary when the Montreal Canadians defeated the Wayne Gretzky led Los Angeles Kings to win the Cup. And that was the last time a Canadian team won the Cup.

What are the chances of that?

Well, 100%. Duh, It already happened.

OK wise ass, what are the chances there would be a 25 year drought for Canada, in general?

Hmmm, well, there are 7 Canadian teams out of 30. Now over that 25 year stretch, there were sometimes 6, sometimes 8, but we will call it 7 to make the math easier.

So to calculate this……carry the 4…… the probability of this happening in a 25 year span is 0.0013, or .13%

Uhhh, yeah, something is up here.

I am sure some of it has to do with the Canadian dollar being a loser to the all mighty American dollar, and there is some bad luck in there as well, but regardless this is bad for business.

As much as I hear people crow about how great the NHL playoffs are, the ratings are not that great (see a previous post on that). The US will never care about the NHL like Canada does. I mean other than the fact over 50% of the players are from the Great Northwest, their version of ESPN is completely dedicated to the NHL like ours is dedicated to the NFL. It really is a shame they can’t even get a team to win their damn Cup for a quarter of a century.

And this year is looking no different. The only Canadian team left is the Ottawa Senators, and if sports history has taught us anything is that all teams with the names ‘Senators’ suck. And they are already down 0-2 to the Penguins.

When the NHL started their mass expansion to the States in the late 80’s (thank you LA for buying Wayne), it watered down the league a ton. Then teams from Canada moved to the US. Then half of the moved back. It is a mess.

And the solution? Put a new team in Vegas. Yeaaaaaahhhhhh.

Anyway, the NHL has to get back to their roots, and those roots being having strong Canadian teams. I know there are many Blackhawk, Flyer, Ranger, Red Wing fans, but there is not one US city where the hockey team dominates the sports landscape. Hell, even in San Jose they talk more about the Warriors. Yet in Edmonton, they are still relishing the time when they dominated the NHL…..35 years ago!!! Calgary still talks about their Cup……..28 years ago!!! And Vancouver….well….they just like hockey a lot.

So I am rooting for the Sens to pull off the most unlikely of upsets, beat the Pens, and win it all. And when that doesn’t happen, I’ll be rooting for the Canucks for 2018. And when they don’t win it all, I’ll be rooting for those Seattle Icewolves.