Is it too hard to play in Canada?

[Legion34]

Of course it’s not “too hard to play” in Canada.

That’s silly.

Are their disadvantages that make it harder to win in a competitive sport where minor differences make massive differences in outcomes? Absolutely.

The media/fan pressure makes it harder in comparison to teams that don’t have it.
The taxes make it much harder.

It’s like asking “is it too hard to score with old wooden sticks”. Of course not. Gretzky scored 92 goals with a stick you could but for 19 dollars at Canadian tire.

But if your team had to play with the red and white titans and American teams got 2025 technology. It’s not the same.

 

[Legion34]

MLB, MLS, NBA and NFL all have teams that have not won a championship or appeared in a championship game. Many factors at play and one of the most important is odds.

Yes. And taxes are by far the biggest. No state tax teams have are 6/32.

What are the odds that 22% of the league
Have all (except Seattle) made it to the finals. And at least one no state tax team has been in every single final since 2015 save one.

Tampa 3 finals
Florida. 2 finals
Vegas. 2 final.
Dallas. 1 final
Nashville 1 final

No state tax teams have been 9 Of 18 finalists in the last 9 years. And 2 may be the finalists this year.

 

[NYRnine94]

These guys make millions of dollars to chase a puck around and shoot it into a net. If they can't handle some pressure then that's f***ing embarassing.

 

[Dirty Dog]

There’s some good Canadian teams with a lot of recent success. They just haven’t won the Stanley cup lately. I don’t agree with the premise of the thread

 

[Bradely]

I can't understand this pressure argument for a hockey player playing in Canada.
In my opinion, playing for the Yankees or Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, etc. must be unbearable from that perspective. In Montreal, Maurice Richard must be rolling around laughing at these ridiculous comments.

 

[RuudeDog]

Can’t wait for the Oilers to win this year so we don’t have to read stuff like this anymore

Yeah and all that took was drafting one of the the best players who has ever played and even he hasn’t won yet.

 

[Guy Larose]

These guys make millions of dollars to chase a puck around and shoot it into a net. If they can't handle some pressure then that's f***ing embarassing.

Well brace yourself because these generations and the younger ones coming up can't stand pressure, criticism, a lot of laziness, etc. Hate me all you want but that's all I read about everywhere. Of course I'll have all of them on my back for saying this though lol

 

[Melrose Munch]

 

[Bring Bak Damphousse]

While Canadian teams face different obstacles than some of their American counterparts, I’d point out only 16 different teams have one the cup since 1993. There are still more American teams that haven’t won the cup in that time, than the 7 Canadian teams. And since 93, Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Montreal have all reached the finals.

 

[The Hockey Tonk Man]

No
Also, it’s not that cold in the winter (Toronto)
But yeah the media sucks

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

The Tampa Bay Lightning.

Between Jeff Vinik and Steve Yzerman, they wanted some new look and made it in the vain of the Leafs and Red Wings.

A team with a unique identity and name was stripped of this by utilizing a logo picked straight out of Microsoft Clip Art. And if that wasn't bad enough, they put that pathetic logo on jerseys stolen from the Leafs and faded in the sun.

They had victory stripes under the arms since the inception, something unique and not everyone noticed and created by founder Phil Esposito. They got rid of that feature, despite my recollection that they spoke of bringing them back.

Fans were initially upset with the rebrand, especially with the lack of black. So they acquiesced by putting black lines around the numbers and adding a bolt to the pants with a black outline. This was a feeble attempt at appeasement, yet because many fans are fickle, it was forgotten quickly, and fans and season ticket holders seemed to just let it go.

They have black thirds, but doesn't make up for the uber plain blue and white Leafs copy. They are not the Leafs and have not been in the league for 100 years. They shouldn't look like that.

Vinik wanted his branding so bad that he permitted the joke they wear on the ice and allowing it to go on this long. Cups don't void lack of aesthetics. Pens changed a year after theirs.

Now it's been way too many years with the same bland and uninspired look. The bland look went stale long ago, and Vinik is one of the few that doesn't think so. My hope that as he steps away from the team, the new ownership group finally fixes the mess that this team is.

When original 6 teams have more complex and involved logos with depth than a team from the 90's with a name like Lightning, it's pretty sad.

Just as one example Yankees fans have booed Stanton many times when he’s struck out. They’re just as hard on their players. I’m not even sure what the media said about Kessel. They pressured him to talk and he was a shy guy so he caught some flak for that but I don’t recall him being explicitly shit on for his play by the media. Happy to see any articles to the contrary.

This saga was generally considered an example of how over-the-top the Toronto media are with their willingness to create negative buzz around the team:

Leafs were sick and tired of Phil Kessel

The hot dog vendor who parks daily at Front and John Sts. just lost his most reliable customer.

torontosun.com

Leafs blog debunks Steve Simmons hot dog tale about Phil Kessel

If you want to see a textbook example of “oblivious,” read the passage above and then read Simmons’ all-timer on the Phil Kessel trade, which will go down as one of the most pedantic screeds ever written about a player leaving town, one where you can actually hear Simmons’ fingernails clawing at...

sports.yahoo.com

Couple examples off the top of my head from the Red Sox

1. Carl Crawford
2. David Price
3. Bill Buckner, while a long time ago (80s), was a very good MLB player and his name was only ever mentioned with vitriol under 2004.

The Boston Red Sox media is famous from slamming the hell out of players.

For another, Jaylen Brown, while still currently on the Celtics, has spent his entire career seeing the media talk about trading him away, and it is again the hot topic on all of sports radio & local TV again.

Edit: Another good example from the Sox is happening right now - Rafael Devers has gotten a ton of hate, and a lot of talk that he's going to 'eat his way out of playing'. Seems like the same type of media attention you are referring to with Kessel, but I can't be sure since I am not in the Toronto media market so I don't see the coverage you do / have.

And that is an important point - you don't see the pressure in other cities because you are not living amongst their concentrated fanbase and aren't subjected to the local media coverage.

I vaguely remember the David Price in Boston situation, but if you could refresh my memory it would help.

Wasnt there some bizarre chicken-and-videogames-gate story from a few years back where the media leaked that the Red Sox bullpen on days off would just chill and play videogames and eat fried chicken in the clubhouse during games?

Outside of the Devers and Buckner cases, I still just cant see how that compares to the situations like Kessel, or even worse trading Larry Murphy for literally nothing in 97 because the fanbase didnt like him, or even the tragedy that was the end of Frank Mahovlich's time in Toronto. Hogtown can be pretty vicious like that.

 

[RedHawkDown]

Well brace yourself because these generations and the younger ones coming up can't stand pressure, criticism, a lot of laziness, etc. Hate me all you want but that's all I read about everywhere. Of course I'll have all of them on my back for saying this though lol

It’s the same old man yells at clouds story that every single generation does. That’s why people will call you out lol

 

[PistolPete]

I’m not the president but I can still criticize policy. I pray for the day people stop using this horrible, horrible, completely meaningless argument.

To answer the question, if hockey players can’t take the pressure of a Canadian market, they probably shouldn’t be pro athletes. Hockey is an irrelevant sport in the grand scheme of things. Canada just cares as much about hockey as the US does about baseball and football. There has never been a hockey player who has ever lived who faced more pressure than the Yankees do every year. Or the Red Sox. And then there’s European soccer, which is in an entirely different tier of pressure. Playing in toronto isn’t even in the top 10 of most intense situations in North America.

There's being able to withstand tgr pressure and then there's the desire to do so- especially when it's not necessary and you can play in any American market where there is not only no pressure but complete anonymity.

Probably more than avoiding the pressure players want to be where they can go about their day- especially if they have family- and not have to interact with fans on a regular basis.

People underestimate how important this is to any celebrity. I have heard instances of athletes basing their decision to go out and do something on how much they're up for having to interact with fans and thus have their day consmtsntly disrupted.

Not a attempt to garner pity for any of them, but when it comes to a topic such as this, that psychology can't be overestimated.

 

[HockeyVirus]

Watch the press conference with Brad Treliving today and tell me how toxic the media is in Toronto. I am one of those nerds I watch EVERY presser.. Yes the ones where the players say pucks in deep. EVERY one all year long, even the ones on the golf course in the summer.

I have not once heard the media push these guys on any actual hard questions. They always frame it in the easiest way for the person to deflect and never follow up on things said.

The pressure is people talking about them. That is it.

 

[justHypnos]

Seems like the Habs over perform every year. When Bergevin was GM every player he acquired played better with us than before. Today our prospects and other acquisitions are continuing to play above expectations. There is no way anyone can say it’s hard to play in Montreal given that.

I think Toronto and Calgary just have bad cores, and Vancouver got unlucky with injuries. Edmonton and Winnipeg are doing really well.

 

[BTO]

Yeah that McDavid guy might be the best player in the league if he played in San Jose.

 

[danktopshelf]

Yeah that McDavid guy might be the best player in the league if he played in San Jose.

That is 100% true and factual. He'd probably be the best player in the league for any of the other 31 franchises as well.

 

[PistolPete]

Do you know how many HoF of major UFAs have signed with Detroit? And won? Spent their entire careers there?

It’s not “too hard” to win in Canada… they’ve just had a horrible run of management or signing losers who can’t get it done.

The hardest team to build would be Winnipeg, who have still been arguably the second most successful outside of Edmonton.

Any top 6 F or top paring D hasn't signed with a Canadian team in years except for John Tavares because they don't want to play here

 

[Golden_Jet]

Any top 6 F or top paring D hasn't signed with a Canadian team in years except for John Tavares because they don't want to play here

Claude Giroux got 79 points his first season in Ottawa.

 

[NVious]

McDrai prove it's not, those guys are total dawgs and even though they haven't won anything, they are revered and adored.

Hell Drai was injured last year and because of that was basically rendered as doing a whole lot of nothing after the Vancouver series, but nobody would ever question him, his character or his work ethic because of his previous performances.

No Canadian team expects to win every year, but they do want an honest effort. If you give that, you'll be loved and you can go down as a legend, if you don't you'll face more scrutiny, but winning in a place with less scrutiny and pressure means less, so there is a tradeoff.

 

[Melrose Munch]

Claude Giroux got 79 points his first season in Ottawa.

He was old and he went to a team where he got (and still gets) top 6 minutes. If he went to Pittsburgh or stayed with the Panthers he would be on the third line.

 

[Golden_Jet]

lol Pittsburgh

 

[Kaners PPGs]

Pressure is something someone puts on themselves. Players should not be on social media, listening to sports talk shows, and limit or eliminate what their inner circle says to them. Eliminate the noise. I don't understand how players like Marner or Pettersson don't understand this.

 

[Fatass]

Watch the press conference with Brad Treliving today and tell me how toxic the media is in Toronto. I am one of those nerds I watch EVERY presser.. Yes the ones where the players say pucks in deep. EVERY one all year long, even the ones on the golf course in the summer.

I have not once heard the media push these guys on any actual hard questions. They always frame it in the easiest way for the person to deflect and never follow up on things said.

The pressure is people talking about them. That is it.

Imo the pressure isn’t different at the rink. It’s in the USA once away from the rink the players live in total anonymity so the pressure is off. Up here the pressure is constant. There’s no getting away from it. Even if doing well and loved by the fans star players up here have to always on guard when out and about. There’s a big advantage to not taking their job home.

 

[jellybeans]

Its all about the $$$$$$$$$$