As per a TSN.ca report Thursday, for the first time in its 98-year existence, the NHL will not have a majority of Canadians among the 30 team rosters. Shiver me timbers and clutch me pearls, right? I mean, THIS IS OUR GAME, RIGHT?!?!
Nah. I’m waxing sarcastic. The truth of the matter is, Canadians – including those of us who have their own intermission show on Hockey Night In Canada, and those of us who don’t – shouldn’t be alarmed to see a decline in the impact our fellow citizens have on the game. To the contrary: we should be celebrating the growth of the sport, and working to strengthen its roots at home while also growing them abroad.
According to the TSN report, after the first two weeks of play this season, Canadians made up 49.7 percent of the 680 players who appeared in a game. That’s down from 51.8 percent last season, and from 53.4 percent in 2013-14. But to focus solely on that statistic is to ignore the bigger picture, which remains hugely flattering to Canada’s contributions to the game. This season’s 49.7 number is still double the total of the next-most-represented country (the U.S., which has 24.2 percent of NHLers in the league) and more than 40 percent better than third-place Sweden (9.1 percent).
In other words, Canada is far and away the most dominant force in hockey and will remain so for some time.
And always remember: the NHL and hockey, like any other league and sport, are reflections of the larger societies in which they operate. In this case, we’re talking about globalization – a market force that, for better or worse, has impacted virtually all industries. Given that reality, it would be alarming if the NHL and hockey didn't experience the same effect. Yet some Canadians still cling to the archaic notion the game is somehow less pure because there are more non-Canadians involved. If we’re not winning every international elite tournament, claiming all NHL individual awards, bringing the Stanley Cup back to Canada every season and being picks Nos. 1 through 100 at the NHL draft, there’s some sort of malignant creep at work, and if we don’t do something to address it, we’ll all be taking our kids to Cricket Camp in the next decade.
That’s just good, old-fashioned Canadian hockey exceptionalism. And let’s take that exceptionalism to its logical extreme. If you’re Canadian, would you really want a 10-team league, played by only Canadians, watched by an audience limited to their fellow countrymen?
Of course not. Think of the talent and emotion we’d be robbed of. Think of the passion for hockey that exists in Philadelphia and Boston, in Stockholm and Moscow, in the Czech Republic and Finland, and what the sport would be without it. If Canada had been ultra-protectionist as some of our more famous nationalists demanded, it’s more than likely other nations would’ve followed suit, and the result would be a markedly worse on-ice product across the board.
If the game hadn’t grown beyond Canada’s borders, you know what else we’d probably be without? Auston Matthews, the 18-year-old phenom and consensus top pick in the 2016 NHL entry draft. Matthews – currently playing in Switzerland, by the way – was born in Scottsdale, Ariz., and honed his considerable skills with the U.S. National Development Team. And if NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s sunbelt strategy hadn’t been carried out, maybe Matthews decides to play baseball. Maybe he takes up swimming, or golf. Thankfully, hockey was available to him, and his choice to invest his energies in it will pay back the sport hand over fist.
Really, that’s all Canadians, or anyone else who claims to love the game above all else, ought to be asking for. How do we attract the best athletes to this sport? Certainly, not by national navel gazing and resentment toward other countries getting in on the fun.
No, we do that by looking beyond our familiar environs and searching the globe for talent, recognizing that any gains made by a non-Canadian country only pushes Canadians to be even better.
So sure, there are fewer Canadians in the NHL this year. Big deal. The league is more profitable and popular than ever before, and there’s still room for growth not only in the U.S., but Europe as well.
That’s the only metric that matters, and don’t let any insecure Canadians tell you any different.