As identified in this thread the Canadian teams all have a problem with the patience required to build a NHL team. Most every championship in recent memory came out of the teams being awful for an extended period of time but also allowing young players to make mistakes and to grow.
Every city has media outlets that are expecting every first round draft pick to enter the league in their first year and have no mistakes. The pressure is on from the first game and when dealing with 18 to 20 year old kids that can be daunting. Every Canadian market has their Eric Francis like reporters who are all but willing to create controversy for clicks and ruin their confidence in the process.
From 1995 through 2006 the majority of Canadian teams were unable to pay the large salaries that players were demanding with a weak dollar and were feeder teams for the larger markets. The teams were having to do season ticket drives so that the teams didn’t leave, it is hard to justify paying larger salaries when they could barely afford to keep the lights on. The impact of that was felt for close to a decade.
I also think that the bigger teams could afford more scouts and had a bit of an advantage relative to clubs like the Flames who had fewer scouts. This lead to worse drafting for a period of time. Same thing when you have a shoestring budget you don’t have the larger nets to find some of the diamonds in the rough such as Detroit managed to do.
Plus it is really, really hard for a team to win in this league with all of the cards needing to fall into place at the same time, being awful at the right time with getting the right draft picks, having players exceed expectations based on draft position, having good free agent signings and asset management, plus not having major injuries and being able to keep everything together for an extended period of time so that players grow. How in the past 20 years there have only been a handful of teams who have managed to do that. Look at Carolina they have been very good for close to a five year span and yet they haven’t managed to make it into the finals yet and that is after having all of those things as well. Since 2008 so a 15 year span only 8 different teams have managed to win the cup. That will change this year but it still shows how difficult it is to win with only St Louis, Washington and Colorado being the only one time winners (and Colorado could win more with their core obviously)
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