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Neil PaineMar 27, 2024, 07:40 AM ET
CloseNeil Paine writes about sports using data and analytics. Previously, he was Sports Editor at FiveThirtyEight.
Want to know how long it’s been since the last time a Canadian NHL team won the Stanley Cup?
More than three-quarters of the nearly 1,000 current NHL players weren’t born when the Montreal Canadiens hoisted the trophy in June 1993. Only about 3% were at least 5 years old, an age at which they might reasonably have any memory of a Canadian team winning. Even Mark Giordano, the league’s oldest player this season at 40 — coincidentally, also a Toronto native and a Maple Leafs defenseman — was 9 years old that summer.
For almost every player in the league now, the idea of a Canadian champ merely exists in the world of the theoretical, not in lived reality.
Adding insult to injury, 15 different American franchises — or 60% of all the teams south of the world’s longest undefended border — have won at least one championship in the three-plus decades since the ’93 Habs won it all. All while the proudest of hockey nations, which boasts seven franchises that collectively won 50 titles (out of a possible 76) before the drought, waits patiently for the Stanley Cup to find its way back to Canada.
The good news for Canadian hockey fans, though, is the waiting might be over soon. The 2023-24 season represents the country’s best chance at ending the drought in a long time — perhaps since it began in the first place.
According to ESPN BET odds, there’s a collective 27.3% chance that one of the four major Canadian squads with any kind of legitimate playoff shot — the Edmonton Oilers, Leafs, Vancouver Canucks and Winnipeg Jets — will claim this season’s title. Compared with pre-playoff odds from earlier seasons, that’s the best chance Canadian teams have had in any year since the drought started following the 1992-93 season. (The Canadian teams had a combined 27.8% chance in 1993-94, the first season of the losing streak.)
ESPN
Sure,…
Source link : https://www.espn.com/nhl/insider/story/_/id/39815401/canada-stanley-cup-playoffs-drought-end-vancouver-edmonton-winnipeg-toronto
Author : Neil Paine
Publish date : 2024-03-27 12:45:29
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