Does Canada’s Stanley Cup drought end this year? Sure looking that way

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Is this the year? It’s sure beginning to feel like it is.

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A Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup.

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A Canadian team ending the drought of more than three decades.

The last time it happened — the 1993 Montreal Canadiens — also happened to be the last time an NHL player scored 70 goals.

It was 31 years ago. It was one year before Elias Lindholm was born. It was two years before the Hartford Whalers would hire Jim Rutherford as a rookie general manager.

All that was a hockey lifetime ago.

And Auston Matthews, by the way, is on pace to score 70 goals this season.

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“It looks good right now for Canadian teams,” said Ken Holland, general manager of the Edmonton Oilers, hockey’s hottest team with 16 wins in a row.

“But remember, since the salary cap came to hockey only two teams that have won the Presidents’ Trophy have gone on to win the Stanley Cup.”

Holland was clearly talking about the Canucks when addressing the historical circumstance of the Presidents’ Trophy. The Canucks were a great team on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they became even greater with the acquisition of Lindholm from Calgary.

They look to have everything a champion needs — superb goaltending with Thatcher Demko, the Norris Trophy favourite on defence in Quinn Hughes and probably the deepest set of centres in the league with Elias Pettersen, J.T. Miller, assuming he stays at centre, and Lindholm down the middle.

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Teams have won without big-name goaltending before. Adin Hill won the Stanley Cup last year in Vegas. Darcy Kuemper won the year before that in Colorado. How great a first half has this been in Vancouver?

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The Canucks, with Lindholm, now have six players and coach Rick Tocchet in the All-Star Game. The Maple Leafs are next best with four players in the game, most of them voted in because they happen to be hosting the annual all-star snoozefest.

But if anyone understands winning, it’s Rutherford. He won an unlikely Cup in Carolina with Cam Ward in goal and not a single hockey stud on defence. He won twice in Pittsburgh with Matt Murray as his playoff goaltender and one of those Cups came with Kris Letting out with an injury.

This Vancouver team, on paper, looks stronger and deeper than any of the three Rutherford teams that won before. And adding Lindholm, who used to centre Matt Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau in Calgary, is a dream addition.

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And having Demko is a treat. “He might be the best goaltender in hockey,” said Leafs general manager Brad Treliving. “In fact, I think he is this season.”

That’s just the beginning of the Vancouver part of the story, this being early February. The Canucks have it all going on, but in Holland’s words, it’s still early. Rutherford made the deal now for Lindholm rather than wait for next month’s trade deadline because Rutherford has done this before. Many times over.

“In ’06, the No. 1 trade target on the board was Doug Weight. Everybody was talking about who was going to get him. We just jumped out ahead of everybody and grabbed him.

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“And then right at the deadline, we picked up Mark Recchi.” Rutherford won his first Stanley Cup that year in Carolina. “Without Weight and Recchi, we don’t do that.”

Rutherford has three Stanley Cups to his credit. This year would make it four to add to an already remarkable Hall of Fame career. He’s been in Vancouver since 2021 and has done more in a short time than Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello, Kyle Dubas and Treliving combined have pulled off in the past nine years.

“I think it’s going to happen,” said Rutherford, not talking about his team winning a championship or any Canadian team becoming the first club to win since 1993 — but about Matthews scoring 70.

“He might get 80. We keep changing the game, but the better players seem to figure out how to adapt. They just keep better all the time.”

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If seeding was done today on the top four Canadian teams, it would read this way: Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, Toronto Maple Leafs.

Holland’s Oilers have won 16 games in a row and that’s with the game’s ultimate talent, Connor McDavid, yet to completely hit his offensive stride. And they’re considered behind the Canucks.

Vancouver’s goaltending and defence are better than what Edmonton has.

The Jets have the coach in Rick Bowness, the goaltender in Connor Hellebuyck, a top defenceman in Josh Morrissey and all kinds of depth up front. “They play with incredible structure,” said all-star Boston Bruins coach Jim Montgomery. “When we played them earlier in the year, they kicked our a–es.”

The Leafs have top-end heavy stars in Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, all of that accompanied by a boatload of questions.

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No Canadian team has been a serious contender for the Cup since the Sedin twin-powered Canucks, with Roberto Luongo in goal, lost to the Bruins in the Stanley Cup final of 2011. And never before this season have as many as four Canadian teams finished with 100 points apiece in a single NHL season. This year, all of the Canucks, Oilers, Leafs and Jets appear headed to 100.

“I can tell you this,” said Holland, “you’re going to have legitimate Stanley Cup contenders knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. The depth in the league is that strong. There are that many great teams in Canada. There are fewer weaker teams than I can remember.

“I believe these are legitimate Cup contenders in Canada. And I’m not sure it has been that way for a long time. We can talk all we want about this now, but we have to go out and do it. That’s the thing with playoffs. A lot of years, teams that weren’t expected to win didn’t win. And teams that were expected to get knocked out early played deep into the playoffs.

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“We’re at the halfway mark of the season. There’s a lot of hockey still to play.”

Treliving is hoping his Maple Leafs take a giant step forward in the second half of the NHL season. When the season began, the Leafs and Oilers would have tied for the best Canadian team, ahead of Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Now it’s a top-heavy crowd with the Leafs trailing the Canucks, Oilers and Jets.

The first half of the season has been about discovery for Treliving, the first-year Leaf GM. He’s learning about his coach, Sheldon Keefe. He’s learning about his stars and those on his team who are not. He’s learning about his goaltending, which has been hot and cold.

“Do we have some holes?” Treliving asked rhetorically. “Everyone has some holes. It’s what we do between now and then that matters.

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“This is the deepest group of teams I can remember in Canada. I really like Vancouver’s team. I like what the Oilers are doing. I like the way the Jets play. And then we went and beat the Jets twice in the two games before the break.

“You even look at the other teams in Canada. There aren’t free points anymore. I know Ottawa’s record isn’t that good, but I like the team and the way they’re playing lately. And Montreal plays everybody hard. The free points you used to get against the weak teams aren’t as available as they used to be.”

The all-star weekend really has very little to do with hockey and a lot about the sport trying to find its celebrity footing in a world in which it is mostly ignored. There is a skills competition Friday night. There’s a shinny exercise disguised as a game Saturday afternoon. Then everyone goes home.

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And the real hockey of the second half begins. Before the real real hockey of the April playoffs begins. For Rogers Sportsnet, the Canadian NHL rights-holder in Year 10 of a 12-year contract, this could be the post-season they have been waiting for.

They could wind up with Canadian teams playing in playoff series in the West. The ultimate dream for Sportnet would be an All-Canadian Stanley Cup Final.

But really, that’s getting greedy in the big picture. “Too many teams are too close to each other to predict anything,” said Holland. “This is as close a league as I can remember

“You don’t always know which trade is going to change things. One year in Detroit, we picked up Larry Murphy at the deadline (and they weren’t looking for him). I don’t think we win the Cup that year if we don’t make that deal. Then the next year we picked up Chris Chelios. We thought it was a great deal. We lost second round.”

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Rutherford didn’t say the Lindholm deal represented his last bit of roster manipulation for the season and Holland indicated he is very interested in enhancing the Edmonton roster in the second half, while Treliving isn’t sure publicly who might be available at what price.

Last season, the Florida Panthers snuck into the playoffs on the final days of the regular season and went on to play for the Cup. Not that many years ago, the Los Angeles Kings did the same in the Western Conference and won the Cup.

Now it all starts with the Canucks for a second half look. The team has the look it has everything. All they have to do is match the enthusiasm of their 74-year-old general manager. And that by itself is a challenge of significance.

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