There is one question hanging over the Edmonton Oilers as they begin Saturday night’s Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers. It’s been more than 30 years since a Canadian team, the Montreal Canadiens, lifted the Cup. The question is: if the Oilers don’t bring the Cup to Canada, does that matter? If American teams forever claim the Cup, can Canada at least claim the soul of hockey? The answer is complicated.
Let’s go back to a different era of the Oilers. In August 1988, Wayne Gretzky left the Oilers, a team with which he had won four Stanley Cups in five seasons. It was a heartbreaking outing. Gretzky famous cried during the press conference to announce his departure. And, indeed, it seemed to many that something more profound had changed than Gretzky’s move from one zip code to another. The deal (he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings) was not only huge in terms of dollar value and number of players. It was huge for the sport. Gretzky was a superstar, and his arrival in the United States – to Los Angeles, no less – launched him into the sports stratosphere. next to Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson. Kings owner Bruce McNall toured the team across the United States during Greztky’s first preseason with the team, visiting places that were unconventional at the time: Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas. At each of them they were greeted by sold-out crowds. Suddenly, hockey became big. Bigger than ever. Hockey had triumphed in the United States.
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A few years later, Gary Bettman, an American (a basketball player, no less), arrived as the NHL’s new commissioner. It was 1993, the year the Canadiens would win the Cup, marking the end of Canadian victories for three decades. That November, NHL referees went on strike and Bettman quickly embodied a role he still fills for many Canadians. “What’s particularly galling to many is that Bettman’s style may be a sign of things to come in the NHL,” Mary Ormsby wrote in the Toronto Star that month. “The big, heavy foot of American influence is just the beginning of change in what had essentially been a Canadian game.” There were already new teams in San Jose, Tampa and Anaheim. Two years after Bettman arrived, the Winnipeg Jets left for Arizona. The following season, the Quebec Nordiques went to Colorado. Before the decade was over, there were teams in Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.
Back north, the teams that had not yet left Canada were broke and threatening to leave. In 1998, Edmonton arrived in a matter of hours of losing the Oilers. The Ottawa Senators were also on the brink in 1999, when then-owner Rod Bryden was looking to sell (to Portland, Las Vegas or perhaps Houston). And there seemed to be little sympathy from the NHL and its owners. In September 1999, the league and owners said they would commit to keeping the teams in Canada, but only if they got a tax break or if the NHL could take a share of hockey betting revenue from provincial sports lotteries. The Canadian federal government He came throughbut a year later the Calgary Flames were still begging sell 14,000 season tickets to keep the team in the city. Things changed after the new collective bargaining agreement was signed following the 2004-05 lockout. A strict salary cap was introduced and, coincidentally, commodity prices skyrocketed, boosting the Canadian dollar. The tax issue continues to be a problem. But these days, it has morphed into concern that a lesser or nonexistent State taxes court the best players far from the demanding Canadian markets. How else do you explain that Florida has sent both of its teams to the Cup finals for five consecutive years and Canada has sent only one in that span?
Yes, Canadian teams have had their opportunities. Just four years after the Flames almost left, they were in the Cup final. But they lost to Tampa Bay. A year after the full season lockout, the Oilers reached the finals, but lost to Carolina. The following year, the Senators got there, only to lose to Anaheim. Montreal reached the finals in the Covid bubble year of 2021. They also lost to Tampa Bay. You see the pattern: Canadian teams lose to expansion teams in the southern US states. The only break was in 2011: Vancouver’s loss to Boston. But the relatively northern position of that American city was no consolation.
And each failure has awakened existentialism. If a Canadian team doesn’t win hockey’s biggest trophy, is hockey still Canadian? If hockey is not Canadian, what is Canada? Because, like it or not, a huge proportion of Canada’s identity since its confederation has been wrapped up in this game. His icy outdoor beginnings, his rugged physique and his centrality in so many communities have combined into an avatar of national identity in a country that for generations has struggled to define itself against its enormous and powerful neighbor to the south. If anything wasn’t American, it was hockey. At least until Wayne left.
But all this agonizing time has been wasted. These questions about the soul of hockey that resides in a certain place will never clarify why it’s still important to watch, no matter which team wins or what city they’re from. What matters is not the nationality of hockey, but its nature. And the nature of hockey is the same now as it was when guys at McGill University developed the game in the 1870s, adapting it from the tumultuous, messy, fun versions that had existed for perhaps a hundred years or more on frozen ponds around the world. world. Canada. The soul of hockey is not based on geography, its soul lies deep in its inherent, fundamental chaos. unpredictability that still lives in the game today.
Take the Oilers for example. A year after Gretzky left, the Oilers began the 1989-90 season in the dumps. Last place in the Smythe division at the end of October. Only 16 points during the first month. And without their first Cup-winning goaltender, Grant Fuhr, they were relying on the “promising but unproven” (as a preseason scouting report put it), Bill Ranford. Oilers head coach John Muckler was not optimistic. “The Oiler dynasty ended a year ago,” Muckler had said after an early-season game in Buffalo. “We are now in an important stage of reconstruction.” Later that week, the Oilers began what would be a 15-3-2 run. The following May, they won the franchise’s fifth Stanley Cup and Ranford took home the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.
This year many believed the Oilers could compete for the Cup, but a month into the season, it was far from certain. They were second to last in the Pacific division. Their power play was terrible, their goaltending was worse. And McDavid scored just two goals in all of October. “That’s not at all what we expected,” McDavid told reporters in early November about the start. But he added that the team was capable of doing great things. “It may not seem like it now, but we are. Everyone has more to give. Me included”. Three days later, the Oilers began what would be a streak of 27 wins in 33 games. Now here they are, in the final. If they don’t win, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean anything about Canada, but it means a lot about hockey.
“Hockey is hard,” said Dallas forward Tyler Seguin said last week, after the Oilers eliminated the Stars in the Western Conference finals. “It takes a lot of things to do well. ….We had something special (and) we lost to a team we thought we could beat. Sometimes that’s the playoffs. Sometimes it’s that rebound, a goal, a save. That’s why we all love it. “This is the hardest fucking trophy in the world to win.”
That’s hockey. You never know what will happen.
