Canada’s Stanley Cup drought: 30 years and counting

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/07/2024 (691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Florida Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 to win this year’s Stanley Cup, it marked the 30th consecutive season that a team based in the United States has paraded around the ice holding Lord Stanley’s mug.

When will this Canadian national nightmare come to an end?

It wasn’t always like this, you know. For a period in the 1980s and early 1990s, the opposite was true. Canadian teams exhibited domination of the Stanley Cup final, winning eight titles in the space of 10 years.

The Oilers won twice to kick off the streak in 1984 and 1985, and Montreal followed by hoisting the Cup in 1986. The Oilers then won in 1987 and 1988, with Calgary Flames winning the Cup in 1989. After Edmonton won for the fifth time in 1990, Pittsburgh Penguins snapped the Canadian streak by winning two in a row in 1991 and 1992 before the Canadiens brought the Cup back north of the 49th parallel in 1993.

Since then, zip. Nada. Nothing. No cups. It’s been a championship drought which many thought might end this year with the McDavid- and Draisaitl-led Oilers. But it wasn’t to be, and now we’re looking at the possibility of 31 years in a row without a Cup as the 2024-25 season gets underway in October.

Since the Habs won the cup in 1993, Canada has experienced two professional sports’ titles — the 1993 Blue Jays won the World Series a few months after the Canadiens’ victory parade, and the 2019 Toronto Raptors captured the National Basketball Association championship. But hockey? One of our national sports? Nothing for 30 years.

Some of our country’s teams have come close in that 30-year window. Calgary Flames won three rounds in 2003-04 before losing to Tampa Bay Lightning in the final. Vancouver Canucks almost got to the finish line in the spring of 2011, losing Game 7 on home ice to the Boston Bruins, leading to post-game municipal unrest that created more headlines than the hockey itself. The Canadiens got back to the Cup final in the 2020-21 season, but lost to Tampa Bay. Even Ottawa Senators, generally regarded as Canada’s weak link, advanced to the Stanley Cup final in 2006-07 but lost to the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

Not so lucky in the playoffs have been the Toronto Maple Leafs, who made it to the conference final a couple of times but still hang on to the glory year of 1967, the last time they won the cup. In that same boat are the Winnipeg Jets, whose best playoff result was 2017-18 when they beat Minnesota and Nashville before losing to Vegas in the West final.

The Oilers are certainly Canada’s best hope in the immediate future, but with rumblings of major personnel changes (can they keep BOTH McDavid and Draisaitl?), perhaps Edmonton’s best chance at Cup success has passed them by.

Oh, for the glory days of the six-team NHL. Canadian teams’ odds were much more favourable back then.

OUT OF BOUNDS

• Bob Molinaro of pilotonline.com (Hampton, Va.): “Scott Boras, agent of Yankees free agent Juan Soto, said that no price is too high for the next team that signs his client because they’ll be getting a ‘centurion.’ Yeah, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean either.”

• Canadian parody website The Beaverton: “Oilers fans not sure what’s worse: Losing Cup or realizing Leafs fans were right about how good Atlantic Division is.”

• Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun, on players not necessarily loving their coaches: “Steve Shutt once said it best when he said players on the Montreal Canadiens hated Scotty Bowman 364 days a year but loved him on the day they got their Stanley Cup rings.”

• Daniel Nugent-Bowman, on Leon Draisaitl’s future in Edmonton (sign extension or depart): “As much as he and McDavid are good friends, he could feel like it’s time to stop being the Sergei Fedorov to McDavid’s Steve Yzerman or the Evgeni Malkin to No. 97’s Sidney Crosby.”

• Comedy guy Torben Rolfsen of Vancouver: “Lots of American friends asking me tonight how hard it is to get Canadian citizenship. Learn the hockey rulebook and name three Stompin’ Tom Connors’ songs.”

• Vancouver humorist Steve Burgess: “Great series, Oilers. If you’d like us to break a few Vancouver windows for you, just say the word.”

• Super 70s Sports: “I bought an autographed Warren Spahn baseball at 3 a.m. last night. My bad decisions after midnight are a lot better now than they were when I was in my 20s.”

• Headline at The Beaverton.com: “‘You should root for the Oilers because they’re Canadian,’ says man who has confused this with the Olympics.”

• RJ Currie of sportsdeke.com: “Just wondering: Why aren’t right-handed pitchers called northpaws?”

• Headline at fark.com: “The Lakers pick Bronny in the second round, plan to change from the Lakers to The James Gang.”

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