You have heard it many times. It’s been 32 years that a Canadian team was able to skate around the ice by wearing the Stanley Cup. And here we are, with a match made and another to play Friday evening in Edmonton, with the last hope of Canada now just three games from the ultimate goal.
Thirty-two years long and frustrating.
As a country of 40 million, we can proudly say that it is our passion for hockey and for our local teams that make the In the NHL tick. We have kept the NHL relevant.
And even more categorically, the first Wednesday match of the Stanley Cup final between the Oilers And the Florida Panthers were seen by 4.5 million Canadians. It is two million more viewers than looking south of the border, in a country with a population eight times greater.
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And did you know that the television notes for each of the seven Canadian teams are better than any team based in the United States? Teams like the Winnipeg jets Have better notes than Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago. It’s hard to imagine.
Oh of course, there are large franchises and large stories among the 25 teams based in the United States. But understand, it’s really the league of our country. With almost half of Canadian players, and a large part of the commercial success around the NHL motivated by Canadian markets and Canadian dollars, it is important to know that we are treating this league differently from other major professional sports leagues.
Yes, it’s a business – a big business and grows all the time. But in our country, hockey is public confidence. Of course, the expectation of all or part of the bases of fans in Canada is to win, but fans invest more than money. We feel the anxiety of each loss, the joy of each objective, the pain of each blow. We don’t look at hockey, we live it.
This is why 32 years feels Oh, so long. And there is always no guarantee that the sequence is no longer going.
& Copy 2025 Global News, A Division of Corus Entertainment Inc.