Canada wants the Cup back. You’ve probably heard at some point this spring that a Canadian team hasn’t won since 1993, Montreal’s last championship. (The dominance of teams from the United States officially began 17 years ago tonight.) And yes, it’s their game; it is a long drought.
But then again, during those 17 years — 16 seasons, not counting this one, because we lost 2004-05 — the NHL had between 26 and 30 teams, and not more than eight of them played in Canada. If everything else were even, if the Cup were awarded randomly, how many titles could Canada expect?
(Yes, more math. Click on.)
The league had eight Canadian teams out of 26 in 1993-94, so a Canadian team had about a 31-percent chance of winning the Cup. Let’s call that “0.31 Cups.” Last year, and the eight before it, had six out of 30, so a 20-percent chance, 0.2 Cups. Add up those percentages and the various ones in between, and Canadian teams “should” have won 3.58 Cups since 1994.
But before Canada wails, let’s look at the 10 seasons before that.
That’s the ’93 Habs. That’s the Penguins’ back-to-back titles in ’91 and ’92. And then that’s seven in a row for Canada, the Oilers dynasty with the ’89 Flames and the ’86 Canadiens mixed in.
In those 10 years, which include seven seasons of what I think Kevin Paul Dupont has termed the “Original 21” with seven Canadian teams, Canada “should” have won 3.32 championships. It won eight.
But these things even out, right? Go back another four years to the WHA merger, through the Islanders dynasty. That leaves us looking at 30 seasons since then, including eight Canadian titles. All those seasons’ percentages add up to… 8.2 Stanley Cups.
Perfect, right? We’ve reached a beautiful equilibrium, and tomorrow’s title will just push it a tiny bit off in one direction or the oth…
What? The years before the merger?
Ah.
Let’s go back to 1926-27, the year the NHL was left as the last major-pro league standing after the western leagues died out. That leaves us 83 seasons to examine, again not counting this one. We went a quarter-century with six teams, including two in Canada, which means they “should” have won one of every three championships. They had as many as four Canadian teams of nine total teams before the Second World War; they dropped as low as 3 of 18 before the merger.
In all those 83 seasons, adding up all the percentages, Canada “should’ have won 24.5 championships.
Which is one and a half more than the Canadiens have on their own. The original Ottawa Senators won a championship. So did the Montreal Maroons. The Leafs have won.
Canada has won 41 Stanley Cup championships since the NHL took it over.
So in the long view, maybe the true north owes the States a few more.
OK, how many more? In how many more years would 41 be the appropriate number? Let’s make the irresponsible assumption that, after this year, the NHL will have seven Canadian teams out of 30, and thus a Canadian team would be expected to win 23.3 percent of a Cup every year.
It’d only take about 70 more years to even it out.