Thread Bump: Does the NHL have a Canadian success problem?
Update for 2025:
Curious about this given the complete lack of actual, meaningful success and competitive ability of the Canadian franchisees for decades and decades.
When you actually thinking about it where the majority of the players are Canadian, hockey is #1 in this country and this is what a lot players dream of.
I don't care what the NHL and Gary Bettman says, the NHL has a Canadian success problem. NHL teams in Canada really have zero ability to actually compete. Year after year, coaches, management, ownership and more changes yet nothing changes. The irony is that the worse you do, the better the chance to draft higher end talent becomes yet Canadian teams continue to under perform.
Given everything that has happened since the NHL introduced the cap and Bettman continues to sell us "competitive balance" the statistical probability of every single thing that has happened and the shocking lack of success both in cups and series wins, it must be actually absurdly low yet happened.
I don't want to turn this into an anti Edmonton thing or the usual weather, taxes etc. I get all that but I am also shocked at the lack of pushback from Canadian ownership/management and the fanbases. A broken clock is right twice a day but this is a clock that is off. A 50/50 coin flip that is 90% skewed against you.
Sorry for the long post and thread bump.
End of 2025 update:
I am wondering what everyone's thoughts are on the lack of meaningful success for Canadian based NHL teams as a whole. How long can this drought continue and does the NHL need to look at making significant changes to help level the playing field.
The Canadian NHL teams are very unique in pro sports in North America and in some ways, unique to European sport markets etc.
The majority of the players come from Canada and/or are trained in Canada via major jr. The teams based in Canada disproportionally bring in more revenue and are responsible for more revenue than their US counterparts. ticket prices, tv ratings, cable contracts, sponsorships etc.
I know we like to all joke about the potential great escape that marque players like McDavid, Mathews may have but then we have our own players like Johnny and Chucky leaving too. Other markets have this issue as well and it's not healthy overall. We always talk about having to overpay to bring in players but with a cap system, you need better value performance, not overpays.
In terms of success, Canadian NHL teams really haven't mattered from a championship perspective in a generation of customers and fans. How long can that continue in a newer, digital age where everybody is keeping for eyeballs and dollars? Can we go 5, 10, 20 more years of a cup drought in a country who's primary #1 sport is hockey?
Should the NHL look at supporting some initiatives to assist the Canadian teams with some of the issues they face and or challenges? 10% more cap room, having the NHL teams pay taxes, having longer contract lengths etc.
I am just thinking outside the box and seeing how healthy this is overall for the sport long term. The cap brought in back in 05 helped some of the smaller markets teams compete a little better but the Canadian markets have some disadvantages still and that get's exasperated by the lack of winning.
Canadian ownership and management can certainly do a better job overall in the last 30 years but does the league as a whole have a role to play in some ways of looking after their #1 clients?
Just a thought.
Last edited by curves2000; 06-17-2025 at 09:21 PM.
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In my eyes, Canadian organizations just need to be run better.
The Maple Leafs look like a well run organization. They won their lottery, they built a good team around their prized 1st overall player and they're in the playoffs every year. They're consistently giving themselves a good shot at winning it all - the playoffs are hard and you need things to go "right".
The Oilers won a bunch of lotteries they were involved in, but continued to be mismanaged to all hell with moronic decisions made all over the place. No one to blame in their failures outside ownership. An owner who has hired terrible GMs, who have hired terrible coaches, and have generally just been terrible. In my eyes they're turning things around, but they were so mismanaged that they've blown nearly a decade of Connor McDavid's career. This is the owner hiring bad managers. If/when McDavid and Draisaitl leave, I don't think they're leaving for City/location reasons - I think they'd leave because they can't win with that management/ownership.
Winnipeg seems to me like a team that had a plan once upon a time, but their window for contending closed years ago and they're not adapting. They're being stubborn and trying to just sneak into the playoffs. Poor management, maybe due to poor ownership beliefs.
Calgary and Vancouver are pretty much identical to me. Impatient from the top down. No big picture view, just trying to scramble their way into the playoffs every year. I think we're seeing Ottawa enter this grouping as well.
The Canadiens are in a rebuild and seem to be doing it right...but we'll see if they get impatient and join Vancouver, Calgary, and Ottawa and begin to make short sighted transactions.
Last edited by ComixZone; 05-16-2023 at 02:28 PM.
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Yup, Canadian teams and Fandom are stuck in our own loop of self destruction. I'd think we really have to stop thinking we are the best, we aren't, and the attitude prevents it.
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First sign of success they push their chips in and spend too many assets for "win now" pieces.
This is really it.
Treliving had a core that could have potentially won a cup, but as early as 2017/2018 was overpaying for rentals or support pieces to hasten the process. Some of those overpayments were in trades (Hamonic), but most were in free agency (Brouwer, Neal, even Coleman though I like the guy). Lo and behold we ran into cap space problems that may have directly led to a 100-point forward leaving the team.
We also had some bad luck during that time frame (Monahan injuries being #1, but also drafting a franchise d-man in Fox that only wanted to play in 1 city AND had the CBA loophole to make that happen), and have struggled to find a goaltender, but all teams have this adversity and it just shows that it's hard to win a championship.
But we would have been a lot closer if we weren't rushing the process along.
Edit to add: perhaps the biggest sign of impatience is not trading assets on the downswing of their careers or at the end of their contracts for value, because "just getting in" is the be all and end all.
Last edited by Five-hole; 05-16-2023 at 02:47 PM.
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I am going to beat this dead horse because it just came up in another thread, but the way the NHL has very low restrictions and requirements for NMCs and NTCs is a big part of the problem. It's no secret that most Canadian teams make up most of the teams on no-trade lists. This severely limits a major tool for managers to build their teams. There are over 200 players in the league now with some form of NMC, and most of them are the best players in the league, and you can be sure that most of them have at least a few Canadian teams as places they can't be traded to. Compare that to the 1 player in in the NBA who has one, and like the dozen or so in the MLB.
Other leagues don't allow this, and as long as it stays like this, Canadian teams will need to be very lucky in order to have long sustained success these days.
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Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 05-16-2023 at 02:50 PM.
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I am going to beat this dead horse because it just came up in another thread, but the way the NHL has very low restrictions and requirements for NMCs and NTCs is a big part of the problem. It's no secret that most Canadian teams make up most of the teams on no-trade lists. This severely limits a major tool for managers to build their teams. There are over 200 players in the league now with some form of NMC, and most of them are the best players in the league, and you can be sure that most of them have at least a few Canadian teams as places they can't be traded to.
Other leagues don't allow this, and as long as it stays like this, Canadian teams will need to be very lucky in order to have long sustained success these days.
Don't forget Norris winners like Fox refusing top sign with a Canadian team.
30 years without a Stanley Cup seems to indicate there is a problem.
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Don't forget Norris winners like Fox refusing top sign with a Canadian team.
30 years without a Stanley Cup seems to indicate there is a problem.
It's a bit crazy that the college hockey loophole hasn't been fixed yet. I'm not sure that has a whole lot to do with the lack of a Canadian team winning a cup as I imagine Fox to be quite an outlier in that respect, but it's a bit odd that draftees from only one league can really call their shots on where they play. It frustrates the whole purpose of the entry draft, which is to promote fairness.
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It's a bit crazy that the college hockey loophole hasn't been fixed yet. I'm not sure that has a whole lot to do with the lack of a Canadian team winning a cup as I imagine Fox to be quite an outlier in that respect, but it's a bit odd that draftees from only one league can really call their shots on where they play. It frustrates the whole purpose of the entry draft, which is to promote fairness.
I still think it's such an easy fix for any draft pick, people talk about the college loophole but any canadian junior prospect can also refuse to sign after 2 years too and go back into the draft.
If you offer a draft pick the rookie max salary then they are treated as an RFA and you retain their rights. That way a player like Fox can refuse to sign, but if the Flames offer him a rookie max they retain his rights.
At that point Fox can either choose to sign with the Flames, or the Flames can negotiate a deal without the fuse of his potential UFA status hanging over them.
Last edited by SuperMatt18; 05-16-2023 at 03:07 PM.
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It definitely comes down to patience, pressure and lifestyle for Canadian teams and their inability to win the cup.
It's hard to convince top talent to come and to stay - see Guadreau and Tkachuk - when there are an abundance of options with better weather, less external pressure, and management/ownership groups willing to build something properly versus going all in before the time is right or refusing to rebuild in the first place.
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And really have any of the Canadian teams had good management...
Vancouver: It was okay under Burke/Nonis/Gillis but has been terrible since.
Calgary: Okay under Treliving but still lots of mistakes, poor before that.
Edmonton: Holland has been okay but it was the worst in the league prior to that.
Winnipeg: Some flashes but pretty mediocre overall
Toronto: Okay under Dubas, pretty poor prior under Ferguson and then Burke.
Montreal: Pretty poor except for some flashes under Bergeron, new GM seems to be on the right track.
Canadian teams have just had some pretty terrible GMs too, or at best average GMs.
No. Canadian teams require zero help from the league. Run your teams better.
Fans also care too much & eat their young like Tommy Boy as the idiot circus boy with a pretty new pet (his potential sale or Stanley Cup Championship).
Canadian NHL teams have a success problem. It's not on the league to prop up teams that haven't built winners. Some older free agents might not choose to sign with certain Canadian teams, but that doesn't mean those teams can't build a winner through drafting, shrewd trades and value signings.
In a 30+ team league, I don't think it's odd at all that seven of those Canadian teams (eight if you include Quebec City I guess) haven't won the Cup in the last 30 years. The other 23+ teams have just been better. Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Vancouver have all made it to the Finals as well during that time, which is almost winning it all. I don't think the lack of Canadian cup success has anything to do with imaginary geographical borders; just odds, really.
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I don't think there is much of a problem since the lockout of 2005. Before that there was uneven playing grounds where only one Canadian team had a chance of building a competitive team. Now they all can host a competitive team if they have competent management/ownership.
The odds are low due to amount of teams in the league. 32 teams in the league and only 7 of them are Canadian. Should the state of New York be worried about winning only one cup in 39 years? The Canadian teams have won 7 in that time! What's the issue?
Winning and "not winning" is not tied to where the team is located.
Thread Bump: Does the NHL have a Canadian success problem?
