#2. Could All Four Western Canadian Teams Make the Playoffs & Win Stanley Cup?
When the NHL season stopped, three of the four Western Conference Canadian teams held a playoff spot.
With only seven Canadian teams in the NHL (four in the West, three in East), it’s always special to see multiple teams make the playoffs.
The Stanley Cup hasn’t crossed the boarder since 1993 but plenty of teams that have came close. The Calgary Flames still think that Tampa Bay stole the cup away from them in 2004, while the Edmonton Oilers may have brought the cup home in 2006 if Dwayne Roloson never got injured.
The Ottawa Senators were no match for the Anaheim Ducks in 2007 when they made Finals, and the Vancouver Canucks have been one win away from the Stanley Cup twice, losing in Game 7 in both 1994 and 2011.
With zero Stanley Cup Finals appearances and only one since 1967, the Winnipeg Jets and Toronto Maple Leafs are the laughing stocks of Canadian hockey, whereas the Montreal Canadiens have bragging rights as the last Canadian team to win a Stanley Cup.
Hockey is to Canada, what baseball is to America. If no American team had won the World Series since 1993, I’m sure the world would be exploding.
Despite there only being a 7/31 chance a Canadian team will win the Stanley Cup in an equal world, those odds would suggest that it’s time for a team to win north of the boarder.
If Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver were all to make the playoffs, that would give a Canadian team a 50 percent chance at making the Cup Finals. I’d take those odds all day that one of those teams would end up making the Stanley Cup Finals, so that would have been amazing to see.