Canada's Stanley Cup Drought Continues As Leafs Eliminated

Canada will have to wait until next year.

The Toronto Maple Leafs were defeated by the Boston Bruins 5-1 in Game 7 of their first round playoff match up tonight. The loss means that Lord Stanley's Cup will travel south of the border for the 26th consecutive year. The last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup was when the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Los Angeles Kings in 1993. To put this number in perspective, the second longest Canadian Stanley Cup drought was between 1936 and 1941. This drought was broken by the Leafs in 1942. The Leafs, of course, have not won a Stanley Cup since 1967.

There is something unnatural about having a Canadian team not winning a Stanley Cup. Hockey means more than life itself in Canada. I don't begrudge an original six city like Boston, Chicago or Detroit winning it or a northern city that regularly gets snow like Pittsburgh. But many of the residents of cities that have won Stanley Cups over the past quarter century such as Dallas, Tampa Bay, Raleigh, Anaheim, Los Angeles and even Washington, D.C. wouldn't know a hockey puck from a kumquat. Life is not fair. But it will make things that much sweeter once this drought is broken.