After the Edmonton Oilers clinched a spot in the Stanley Cup Final, the problems facing Connor McDavid on the podium were predictable.
Winnipeg, Vancouver and Toronto also have a shot at the Stanley Cup this spring, but Edmonton is the last Canadian team standing. So the questions posed to the Oilers superstar are somewhat inevitable as Edmonton is on the verge of ending Canada’s Stanley Cup drought that has lasted more than three decades.
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“Can you talk about making Team Canada?” a reporter asked McDavid on Sunday night. “Everybody from coast to coast is rooting for the Oilers. Does that add pressure?
McDavid handled the situation seamlessly.
“We’re a Canadian team and we have great Canadian fans,” McDavid responded. “It feels good to maybe unite the country a little bit and bring people together.”
It’s a nice and simple narrative, isn’t it?
A hockey-obsessed nation eager to legally send a championship trophy back north of the border.
It’s a storyline pushed over and over again by the Boston Pizza ads, which seem to play during every TV timeout and halftime in the playoffs. The ad begins by recounting the heartbreak experienced by several Canadian teams since Montreal’s miraculous Stanley Cup win in 1993.
After Vancouver lost Game 7 to the Rangers in 1994, someone punched through the drywall.
A Toronto fan threw a plate into the TV screen after losing to Carolina in the Western Conference finals.
After a second-round loss to Anaheim in 2017, an Oilers fan repeatedly ran over their flat-screen TVs with a pickup truck.
An angry Montreal fan threw their AM radio to the ground after the Canadiens lost to Tampa in the 2021 Stanley Cup Final.
(The Flames and Senators’ runs to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2004 and 2007, respectively, were omitted from the ad. But hey, there’s only so much Canadian suffering you can shoehorn into 30 seconds of footage .
The ad’s message is simple: Canadian NHL fans have experienced nothing but bitter disappointment over the past 30 years. It’s time for hockey fans in this country to put aside their deep-rooted historical rivalries and work in the same direction.
As the commercial draws to a close, fans gather inside a Boston Pizza sports bar, where the merchandise is ordinary enough to avoid a trademark infringement lawsuit from the NHL. But it was clearly meant to get Canucks fans and Flames fans high-fiving at the bar. A Senators fan and a Canadiens fan stood side by side. Oilers fans and Maple Leafs fans clinked filled beer glasses together.
“Team Canada hasn’t won a Stanley Cup in 30 years. Maybe it’s time to try something different,” the ad urges. “This year, let’s work together with the fans who have been cheering for us.”
However, both the ad and the reporters’ questions to McDavid stemmed from pure fantasy, not reality.
Will some casual hockey fans in Canada root for the Oilers over the Panthers?
Absolutely.
Will some of the country’s biggest NHL fans hope that McDavid – the absolute best player of his generation – finally gets a Stanley Cup ring?
you bet.
But will the majority of die-hard hockey fans in this country support the Oilers as actively as they do their own team?
forget it.
Of course, most Canadians want the Stanley Cup drought to end, but there’s a very important caveat: only if that happens Their Favorite team. Otherwise, it’s like watching your neighbor win the lottery. I guess that’s fine for them, but what’s in it for you?
With the two Stanley Cup finalists confirmed, consider this social media poll conducted by Sportsnet 650 in Vancouver. More than 70 percent of the 1,531 people who voted said they would cheer for the Panthers. Just 16.4 per cent said they would actively support Edmonton, while nearly the same number (12.9 per cent) said they would remain completely neutral.
Yes, Vancouver fans – who make up the vast majority of this poll – are probably going to be bitter, because Edmonton did knock them out in the second round.
But that’s the point.
You can’t simply ask Vancouver fans to take a break from hating an Edmonton team that was just eliminated from the playoffs. Nor can you ask Calgary fans to ignore decades of hatred and pain over the Battle of Alberta and suddenly support their provincial rivals. In fact, Calgary fans could have sat out the entire Stanley Cup Final.
The Montreal-Toronto-Ottawa triumvirate would never cheer each other up, and while Winnipeg always seemed to be the most lovable Canadian team, they didn’t form any sort of national identity.
Whenever Team Canada is alive after Victoria Day, we ponder this ridiculous question. Should we embrace the last Canadian team for the sake of national pride?
But the answer is always obvious.
Consider Toronto’s most iconic building, the CN Tower, lit up in red, white and blue in the summer of 2021 to commemorate the Montreal Canadiens’ run to the Stanley Cup The backlash that ensued during the final.
It felt awkward and caused such a stir that a spokesperson for the CN Tower had to issue a statement explaining: “This is federally owned and operated property and belongs to all Canadians.”
Our James Mirtle and Sean McIndoe on Vancouver as the Canucks became the last Canadian team standing in the COVID-19 bubble in the summer of 2020 The idea of being on Team Canada was debated interestingly and vigorously.
But to finally settle this argument, we should compare the Oilers’ performance to what the Toronto Raptors did five years ago. When the Raptors magically won the NBA championship in the summer of 2019, the entire country was excited. Massive watch parties are taking place across Canada.
In Abbotsford, British Columbia, more than 1,500 fans came to the Abbotsford Center to watch Game 5 of the Raptors-Warriors series. Across the country in the Maritimes, places like Halifax and Moncton hosted massive Raptors game watch parties.
That summer, Cineplex Odeon opened 33 movie theaters across the country, showing Raptors games on the big screen.
“Canadian fans are invited to unite and support the Raptors as they take on the Golden State Warriors live on the big screen,” their press release said.
Surely they will definitely do the same for Canadian team the Edmonton Oilers in 2024, right?
Alas, a Cineplex Odeon spokesperson told us Competitor This week, “At this time, we do not plan to screen the Stanley Cup Final Series in theaters as the film rights have not yet been acquired.”
Maybe it’s a technicality with the “movie rights” issue, but it doesn’t feel like the Oilers will have national appeal at watch parties in every major city.
We do this for big Olympic events. FIFA World Cup. Yes, the Raptors and Toronto Blue Jays, as they are the only Canadian-based professional teams in their respective sports.
But if Ottawa, Winnipeg and Toronto are planning large outdoor watch parties for Oilers games this month, I certainly haven’t heard about it.
So for those of our friends in America who think we’re obsessed with bringing back the trophy, please know that we’re not making this country stop and wait to see if the Oilers can bring it home. Not everyone on this side of the border is on pins and needles. We are not waiting for the World Cup like England.
The only time we were explicitly pulling on the same rope was when we were rooting for Team Canada at a national competition. The Olympic Games are important to us and the country has achieved a lot since 1993 in this regard.
(We’re not pointing fingers at anyone, but we do know that a country to our south hasn’t won a men’s gold medal since 1980. FYI, forty-four years is also a pretty good drought.)
The Oilers’ championship, while it ended the Canadian team’s 31-year championship drought, meant nothing to any other fan in this country. Cities like Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg have never lifted the Stanley Cup, so the Oilers’ champions don’t get some of the credit. If anything, Edmonton’s Stanley Cup championship will only further anger Toronto fans, who are approaching six decades without a championship.
But if there’s one reason we should collectively head to Canada this month for the Oilers Stanley Cup, it’s to end the ridiculous idea that we’re all waiting for the Stanley Cup to come home.
Maybe if the Oilers win the Stanley Cup in June, we can end the whole “Team Canada” narrative once and for all.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb/ Competitor. Photo: Jeff Bottari/NHLI via Getty Images)
