Will Canada End Its Stanley Cup Drought?
Well, It’s Not Impossible.
It’s been a cold, agonizing quarter-century for hockey fans in the Great White North.
So the more cracks Canadian teams can take at the Cup, the better their country’s odds of winning.
The playoffs aren’t totally a crapshoot, though — better teams still have a greater chance of winning.
(And yep, Edmonton wound up taking the prize.)
The late ’80s were a golden era for Canada’s Cup chances; Canadian teams haven’t combined for even half those odds in a single postseason since 2006.
This year, the five Canadian playoff squads’ probabilities add up to a mere 17 percent — only a little over half what we expected earlier when we naively assumed that every playoff team had an equal shot at Lord Stanley’s Mug.
According to SRS, the best Canadian team — Connor McDavid’s Oilers — ranks a distant sixth in the league, with a rating that translates to a mere 5 percent chance of winning the Cup.
But for now, Canadian hopes of ending the Stanley Cup drought are once again resting on a handful of decent-but-not-great clubs.