30 years without a cup for Canadian teams: why?

[Midnight Judges]

Just the randomness of hockey IMO.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

1. Market (ticket sales) wiling to support a crap product.
2. Management chosen because of cronyism instead of merit.
3. Fans scrutinize every move leading to risk aversion by that FO to keep in power and band-aid solutions with future costs to avoid hard rebuilds.

Dubas was kind of an attempt to break that cycle by Toronto who finally realized they needed to change but they wouldn't give him total reign and you saw he eventually became a part of the TML machine headed by Shanahan. There was a falling out and he got scapegoated on the way out for his troubles.

The FO power structures and markets willing to support those FO power structures are too strong. Every attempt to subvert them with a hire (Dubas, Kent Hughes, Patrick Allvin) from outside the box will eventually fail as they lose autonomy to the machine. I sort of see the Flyers as the American Canadian team and we'll see how they do in their attempt to break the cycle with Briere.

 

[Coffee]

Just the randomness of hockey IMO.

I recognize you.. aren’t the Caps dude?

Anyway,

Canadas time is near, I think Ottawa gets it down within 7 years

 

[Crede777]

2 of those 3 teams you say should have won were Cinderella’s who had no business even being in the fjnals


Especially the Habs who got to benefit from a joke division setsetup

I didn't say "should." The only team that probably "should" have won the Cup was Vancouver. The others had a chance to break the streak because they were in the Cup Finals but obviously weren't the favorites.

 

[bobbyking]

unless the team is full of Canadian players it's not a Canadian team

 

[MessierII]

Been to finals a bunch and lost some close series. I don’t think it’s some grand conspiracy it just hasn’t quite lined up for whatever reason.

 

[VanillaCoke]

Trash management and or owners

 

[KingsFan7824]

What are the chances of 30 years without a single cup for more than 20% of the league? Statistically it’s about 0.5%, roughly the same as winning 10 cups instead of zero.

Explain the chances of what happened between 1976 and 1993.

 

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

It’s not off. And there are many ways to calculate it. Straight approach is just to calculate probability for the share of Canadian teams. 0.2/0.25/0.3 whatever. This is your yearly base probability.
You make it 1 - 0.25 (for example) and 0.75 is your yearly probability of not winning. To calculate it for 30 seasons in a row you should raise it to a power where the power is your 30 seasons.

(1 - 0.25) ** 30 = 0.00017858209017001. 0.000178 is probability of never winning for 30 seasons in a row. So this is basically impossible that no Canadian team was able to win.

Also, you can calculate it with # of teams who made finals if probability there is equal. 6 Canadian teams made it to the SCF. (1 - 0.5) ** 6 = 0.015625.

Etc.

You're overthinking it. Canadian teams make up 22% of the league. Taking out competence, ability and skill, statistically every year there is a 22% chance that one of those teams win the cup.

There are many groupings of 7 teams that have not won the cup in 30 years. Many.

Now, taking statistics out of it, up until the salary cap era, most Canadian teams didn't have the finances that Cup-winning American teams had. As a fan of the Oilers growing up and watching us play Dallas and Colorado every year in the playoffs in the late 90s/early 2000s, the Oilers team salary was nearly half of the aforementioned opponents.

It becomes a more fair question when speaking about the salary cap era and all teams essentially being equal financially. Quickly going back to statistics, 12 of 32 teams have won in this timeframe (roughly 63% of the league have not, keeping in mind 22% of the league are Canadian teams).

The biggest disadvantage I've noticed in the salary cap era is that the development of American players has quickly caught up to Canada and that we're seeing a larger percentage of impact/star players that are American born. The impact that this has on the league is the trend that most of them avoid playing for Canadian teams when given the opportunity. As an Oilers fan, the pool of players that we have the opportunity to acquire as a contending team is simply smaller than our American competitors knowing that the Brett Pesces and Patrick Kanes of the league would never play north of the border. Yes, I know there are American players that have bucked the trend, but there are many more examples of players that I'm talking about.

The other challenge I've seen is the cronyism that exists in Canadian hockey culture. Due to the history of Canadian hockey, Canadian teams seem to be more susceptible to hiring key positions in management based more on relationships then merit. Pretty much every Canadian team has hired these guys without any sort of track record at being good at the roles they've been hired for (Tambellini/McTavish/Lowe era in Edmonton as well as hiring Pat Quinn and Ken Hitchcock past their best before date , Benning in Vancouver, Bergevin/St. Louis in Montreal, everyone in Toronto).

 

[Reaser]

In '93, 8 of 24 teams were in Canada and the playoff format guaranteed a minimum of 3 Canadian teams made the playoffs.

By '96 it was down to 6 Canadian teams and no minimum.

Every expansion added more teams not from Canada.

When ATL moved to WPG it made it 7 of 30. Now 7 of 32.

That's basically it.

 

[Albatros]

They're just not very good at hockey.

 

[Pablo El Perro]

They've made the Finals, what, 4 times, or am I missing one, since Montreal won. A bit of luck vs. Tampa, Boston, or NYR, and Calgary or Vancouver puts this conversation to rest. 5, I missed Edmonton vs. Carolina.

 

[FrankSidebottom]

They've made the Finals, what, 4 times, or am I missing one, since Montreal won. A bit of luck vs. Tampa, Boston, or NYR, and Calgary or Vancouver puts this conversation to rest. 5, I missed Edmonton vs. Carolina.

6 times. 94, 04, 06, 07, 11, 21.

 

[EdJovanovski]

Economy, taxes, weather, less fun/entertainment for young millionaires etc. The pressure argument makes no sense, high pressure sports organizations in the US have very successful histories & have no problem landing the star players. The only time when pressure is an excuse is when there are Canadian cities involved.

 

[blundluntman]

I can understand every vote except conspiracy. People have to grow up with that kinda talk

 

[Kamus]

Because Canadian players are fans of HF Boards and don’t want to stop seeing threads about the Canadian cup drought stop


And the answer is poor ownership due to not needing to field a competitive team and still sellout games and make huge profits

 

[kranuck]

They've made the Finals, what, 4 times, or am I missing one, since Montreal won. A bit of luck vs. Tampa, Boston, or NYR, and Calgary or Vancouver puts this conversation to rest. 5, I missed Edmonton vs. Carolina.

Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal all made the finals but only Vancouver and Ottawa played like contenders during the regular season.

 

[Pablo El Perro]

Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal all made the finals but only Vancouver and Ottawa played like contenders during the regular season.

Calgary had a good cup finals was my point. Can't believe I forgot Ottawa.

 

[Bruce Granville]

I‘m missing weather and Bettman…

 

[Xirik]

100% no commit to any sort of rebuild. If they get guaranteed sellouts with average milktoast teams that barely make it into the playoffs then there is no reason for them to risk losing money and do a rebuild.

 

[LevelingSolo]

All of the above

 

[Hockey Outsider]

Quoting myself from another thread:

Here's an article from FiveThirtyEight.com (granted, their hockey coverage usually isn't very good, but this article is an exception) - Why Can’t Canada Win The Stanley Cup?

My main takeaways are:

1. Yes, it's highly improbable that no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993
2. It's somewhat less improbable than it first appears because winning the Stanley Cup isn't a random draw - better teams are more likely to win, and (for various reasons - the article goes into a few of them) there have been few really strong Canadian teams since 1993.
3. Don't under-estimate randomness in a seven-game series. A Canadian team has lost in game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals four times since then (1994, 2004, 2006, 2011). If the outcome of just four games changes (out of tens of thousands of games played since 1993), we'd be pretty much in line with expectations. (Plus the Nordique/Avalanche franchise - they won a Stanley Cup in the first year after their move to the US).

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Luigi, I don’t think we should be saying “Vancouver should have won”.
2011 Boston Bruins do NOT deserve to be dethroned from their rightful cup. Even in a hypothetical sense.

The team who was going win, won.



Disclaimer : you’re a long time poster, I got nothing but good things to say about your posts, so don’t think I have it out to get you. I’m just tired of people saying stuff like that

The Bruins did not rightfully win the cup in 2011. Colin Campbell had it rigged for them

 

[Kingfan1967]

In 1993 the Montreal Canadians defeated the Los Angeles Kings (mostly on the curved stick controversy - did they pre measure a stolen stick? some say yes.) , So some rich Hollywood types paid a "Gypsy" to place a curse on the Canadians ( the team ) but the "Gypsy" misunderstood and placed the curse on ALL OF CANADA.

 

[Painful Quandary]

Combination of a number of teams having garbage management for significant periods of time and bad luck. Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary went to game 7s.