timeAs the Edmonton Oilers begin their Stanley Cup Final game against the Florida Panthers on Saturday night, one question hangs over them. The Montreal Canadiens have been lifting trophies for more than 30 years. The question is: If the Oilers don’t bring the trophy back to Canada, does it matter? If Team USA never wins the Cup, will Canada at least still have the soul of hockey? The answer is complicated.
Let’s go back to a different Oilers era. In August 1988, Wayne Gretzky left the Oilers, a team with which he had won four Stanley Cups in five seasons. It was a heart-wrenching exit. Gretzky cried at the press conference announcing his departure. In fact, to many it feels like a more profound change than Gretzky’s move from ZIP code to ZIP code has already occurred. The deal — in which he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings — was significant not only in terms of dollar value and number of players. This is huge for the sport. Gretzky was a superstar whose arrival in the United States (no less in Los Angeles) propelled him to the top of the sports world alongside Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson. During Gretzky’s first preseason with the team, Kings owner Bruce McNair took the team on a tour across the United States, visiting then-unconventional locations: Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas Sri Lanka. Everywhere they went, they were greeted by packed houses. Suddenly, hockey became very important. Bigger than ever. Hockey is a success in the United States.
A few years later, American basketball player Gary Bettman took over as the new commissioner of the NHL. In 1993, the Canadiens won the Cup, marking the end of three decades of Canadian success. That November, the NHL referees went on strike, and Bettman quickly embodied the role he still plays for many Canadians. “What’s particularly galling to many is that Bettman’s style could be a sign of where the NHL is headed in the future,” Mary Ormsby wrote in the Toronto Star that month. “The massive influence of American influence is just the beginning of changes in the sport in Canada.” San Jose, Tampa and Anaheim already have new teams. Two years after Bettman arrived, the Winnipeg Jets left for Arizona. The following season, the Quebec Nordiques traveled to Colorado. Before the decade was out, Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas had teams.
Back north, the teams that have yet to leave Canada are bankrupt and threatening to leave. In 1998, Edmonton was eliminated within hours of losing to the Oilers. The Ottawa Senators were also on the verge of collapse in 1999, when then-owner Rod Bryden wanted to sell them (to Portland, Vegas, or Houston). There doesn’t seem to be much sympathy from the NHL and its owners. In September 1999, the league and owners said they would commit to keeping the team in Canada, but only if they received tax breaks or the NHL could share in hockey betting revenue from provincial sports lotteries. The Canadian federal government stepped in, but a year later the Calgary Flames are still begging to sell 14,000 season tickets to keep the team in town. That changed after the 2004-05 lockout and the signing of a new collective bargaining agreement. A strict salary cap was implemented and, coincidentally, commodity prices rose, boosting the Canadian dollar. Tax issues remain an issue. But now there are concerns that low or non-existent state taxes in the U.S. will lure the best companies away from the high-tax Canadian market. How else do you explain Florida sending two teams to the Cup Final five years in a row while Canada has only sent one team in that span, huh?
Yes, Team Canada did have a chance. Just four years after the Flames nearly left, they reached the Cup Final. But they lost to Tampa Bay. A year after the full season was suspended, the Oilers made it to the Finals but lost to Carolina. The next year, the Senators got there — only to lose to, uh, Anaheim. Montreal reached the finals in the 2021 COVID-19 bubble year. They also lost to Tampa Bay. You can see the pattern here – Canadian teams losing to expansion teams from southern states in the United States. The only break came in 2011 when Vancouver lost to Boston. But the American city’s relatively northern location doesn’t bring much comfort.
Every failure stirred existentialism. Would hockey still be Canadian if Team Canada didn’t win the greatest trophy in hockey? If hockey isn’t Canadian, what is Canada? Because, like it or not, much of Canada’s identity has been wrapped up in this game since Confederation. Its cold, outdoor origins, rugged geography and its centrality to so many communities have all combined to personify the national identity of a country that has struggled for generations to build on its vast and powerful define itself among its southern neighbors. If there’s one thing that’s not American, it’s hockey. At least until Wayne left.
But all this painful time was wasted. These questions about where the soul of hockey resides in any one place will never make it clear why it’s still important to watch the games, no matter which team wins — or which city they come from. What matters is not the nationality of hockey, but its essence. The essence of hockey now is the same as it was when the boys at McGill University developed the game in the 1870s, based on a rowdy, disorderly, fun version that has existed on frozen ponds for more than a hundred years. Hockey’s soul isn’t based in geography, its soul lies deeply in its inherent chaos, and that fundamental unpredictability still exists in the game today.
Take the Oilers, for example. A year after Gretzky left, the Oilers started the 1989-90 season in a sluggish way. At the end of October, the Smythe group came last. There are only 16 points in the first month. Without their Cup-winning goaltender Grant Fall, they relied on “promising but unproven” (as one preseason scouting report put it) Bill Langford. Oilers head coach John Muckler isn’t optimistic. “The Oilers dynasty ended a year ago,” Muckler said after an early-season game in Buffalo. “We’re in a major rebuilding phase right now.” Later that week, the Oilers went 15-3-2. The following May, they won the franchise’s fifth Stanley Cup, with Langford taking home the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.
This year, many believed the Oilers could contend for the Cup, but a month into the season, that’s far from certain. They finished second to last in the Pacific Division. Their power play is terrible and their goaltending is even worse. McDavid only scored two goals all October. “This is not what we expected at all,” McDavid told reporters in early November about the launch. But, he added, the team is capable of great things. “It may not look like that now, but that’s what we are. Everyone can give more. Including myself. Three days later, the Oilers began a streak of 27 wins in 33 games. Now, here they are Finals. What does it mean if they don’t win? It means nothing to Canada, but it means a lot to hockey.
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“Hockey is hard,” Dallas forward Tyler Seguin said after knocking off the Stars in the Western Conference finals last week. “You need a lot of things to go smoothly. … We have something special [and] Lost to a team we thought we could beat. Sometimes it’s the playoffs. Sometimes it’s a bounce, a goal, a save. That’s why we all love it. This is the hardest trophy in the world to win.
That’s hockey. You never know what might happen.
