After the Edmonton Oilers clinched their spot in the Stanley Cup Final, the question for Connor McDavid on the podium was predictable.
Winnipeg, Vancouver and Toronto also had Stanley Cup aspirations this spring, but Edmonton is the last Canadian team standing. And so the question to the Oilers superstar was inevitable, as Edmonton is on the brink of ending a Canadian Stanley Cup drought that has lasted more than three decades.
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“Can you talk about being Team Canada?” a reporter asked McDavid. On Sunday afternoon. “Everyone from coast to coast is rooting for the Oilers. Any extra pressure with that?
McDavid handled the question smoothly.
“We're a Canadian team and we have great Canadian fans,” McDavid responded. “And it feels good to maybe bring the country together a little bit and bring people together.”
It's a nice, simple narrative, isn't it?
A hockey-obsessed nation that is hungry for its championship trophy to rightfully return north of the border.
It's a story driven repeatedly by a Boston Pizza commercial that seems to play during every television timeout and intermission in these playoffs. The commercial begins by conveying the angst of several Canadian teams since Montreal's magical run to a Stanley Cup title in 1993.
Someone punched through drywall after Vancouver lost Game 7 to the Rangers in 1994.
A Toronto fan has thrown a plate through his television screen after losing to Carolina in the conference finals.
An Oilers fan repeatedly runs in front of his flat-screen TV with a pickup truck after a second-round loss to Anaheim in 2017.
And a bitter Montreal fan throws his AM radio on the ground after the Canadiens lost to Tampa in the 2021 Stanley Cup Final.
(The Flames and Senators' runs to the Stanley Cup Final in 2004 and 2007 respectively were omitted from the commercial. But hey, there's only so much Canadian misery you can cram into a 30-second ad.)
The ad's message is simple: Canadian NHL fans have known nothing but bitter disappointment over the past 30 years. It's time for hockey fans in this country to put aside their historic and deep-rooted rivalries and move in the same direction.
As the commercial comes to a close, fans gather inside a Boston Pizza sports bar dressed in merchandise that is generic enough to dodge a trademark infringement lawsuit from the NHL. But it's clearly meant to show a Canucks fan and a Flames fan high-fiving at the bar. A Senators fan and a Canadiens fan standing next to each other. An Oilers fan and a Leafs fan clinking full beer glasses together.
“A Canadian team hasn't won the Stanley Cup in 30 years. Maybe it’s time to try something different,” the commercial urges. “This year, let's team up with the fans we've always cheered for.”
However, this commercial and the journalist's question to McDavid are rooted in pure fantasy, not reality.
Will some casual hockey fans in Canada root for the Oilers over the Panthers?
Absolutely.
Will some big NHL fans in this country hope that McDavid, the greatest player of his generation, ends up with a Stanley Cup ring?
You bet.
But will the majority of die-hard hockey fans in this country actively support the Oilers as if they were rooting for their own team?
Forget it.
Sure, most Canadians want the Stanley Cup drought to end, but with one very important caveat: only if it happens for his favorite team. Otherwise, it's like watching your neighbor win the lottery. I guess it's good for them, but what effect does it have on you?
Consider this social network Sportsnet 650 poll in Vancouver after the two Stanley Cup finalists were determined. Of the 1,531 people who voted, more than 70 percent said they would root for the Panthers. Only 16.4 per cent said they would actively support Edmonton, while almost the same number (12.9 per cent) said they would remain completely neutral.
And yes, Vancouver fans, who would have made up the vast majority of that poll, might be bitter that Edmonton eliminated them in the second round.
But that is the point.
You can't just ask a Vancouver fan to temporarily suspend their hatred of an Edmonton team that just kicked them out of the playoffs. Nor can a Calgary fan be asked to ignore decades of hate and bitterness in the Battle of Alberta to suddenly support their provincial rival. In fact, Calgary fans have full permission to sit out the entire Stanley Cup Final.
The Montreal-Toronto-Ottawa trifecta will never root for each other, and while Winnipeg always seems like the nicest Canadian team, it's not like they've forged a national identity of any kind.
It's a ridiculous question we're faced with every time a Canadian team is still alive after Victory Day. Should we embrace the last Canadian team standing for national pride?
But the answer is always in sight.
Consider the backlash in Toronto when the CN Tower, the city's most iconic building, was lit red, white and blue in the summer of 2021 to commemorate the Montreal Canadiens' arrival to the Stanley Cup Final.
That felt uncomfortable and created such a stir that a spokesman for the CN Tower had to issue a statement explaining: “It is a federally owned and operated property that belongs to all Canadians.”
When the Canucks were the last Canadian team standing in the COVID-19 bubble in the summer of 2020, James Mirtle and Sean McIndoe had a fun and lively debate about the idea of Vancouver being Canada's team.
But to definitively settle this argument, we must compare the Oilers' run to what the Toronto Raptors accomplished five years ago. When the Raptors began their magical run to the NBA title in the summer of 2019, it felt like the entire country was galvanized. Massive parties were held across Canada.
In Abbotsford, British Columbia, More than 1,500 fans showed up to watch Game 5 of the Raptors-Warriors series inside the Abbotsford Centre. At the opposite end of the country, in the Maritimes, there were massive parties to watch Raptors games in places like Halifax and Moncton.
That summer, Cineplex Odeon opened 33 movie theaters across the country to show Raptors games on the big screen.
“Canadian fans are invited to join in and support the Raptors as they take on the Golden State Warriors, live on the big screen.” their press release said.
Surely they must be doing the same thing with Canada's team, the Edmonton Oilers, here in 2024, right?
Unfortunately, said a spokesperson for Cineplex Odeon The Athletic this week, “We are not currently scheduled to show the Stanley Cup Final series in theaters because the film rights have not been granted.”
And maybe it's a technicality on the “film rights” point, but it doesn't seem like the Oilers had the national appeal of seeing parties in every major city.
We do that for massive Olympic events. The FIFA World Cup. And yes the Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays, because they are the only Canadian-based professional teams in their respective sports.
But if there are massive outdoor parties planned for Oilers games in Ottawa, Winnipeg and Toronto this month, I certainly haven't heard of them.
So to our American friends who think we're obsessed with getting our trophy back, know that we haven't put the country on pause waiting to see if the Oilers take home the title. Not everyone on this side of the border is on pins and needles. We are not like England waiting for a FIFA World Cup.
The only time we are all definitely pulling on the same rope is when we cheer on Team Canada at national competitions. The Olympics matter to us, and on that front, this country has accomplished a lot since 1993. A trio of Olympic gold medals on the men's side is a pretty nice consolation prize during a prolonged Stanley Cup drought.
(And we're not singling out anyone, but we know of a certain country south of our country that hasn't won a gold medal in the men's category since 1980. Forty-four years is also a pretty good drought, FYI.)
An Oilers championship, while erasing a 31-year drought for a Canadian-based team, does nothing for any other fan base in this country. Cities like Ottawa, Vancouver and Winnipeg, which have never hoisted a Stanley Cup, receive no partial credit for an Oilers championship. And if anything, a Stanley Cup championship from Edmonton will only further enrage Toronto fans, who are approaching more than six decades without a title.
But if there's a reason we should collectively gather in Canada for an Oilers Stanley Cup this month, it would be to put an end to this ridiculous notion that we're all waiting for the Stanley Cup to come home.
And maybe if the Oilers win a Stanley Cup in June, we can put an end to this whole “Team Canada” narrative once and for all.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photo: Jeff Bottari/NHLI via Getty Images)
